JERSEY CITY — We were on our third pie of the night at Razza, across the street from City Hall here, when Ed Levine stopped chewing long enough to ask me a question:

“Are you going to say that the best pizza in New York is in New Jersey?”

Ed Levine knows what it means to make a strong claim for a pizzeria. The founder of the website Serious Eats and the author of the book “Pizza: A Slice of Heaven,” he caused a stir in 2004 by writing in The New York Times that the pies at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix “just might be the best pizza in America.” So when it started to dawn on me, about a year after my first dinner at Razza, that no pizzeria in the five boroughs gave me as much pleasure, I thought of Ed.

New York pizzerias can be divided into those that apply the steady heat of gas (the most revered of these is Di Fara Pizza) and those that subject their pies to the blistering, scorching fires of coal or wood. The high-heat group is further subdivided into the bakers, such as Co. and Totonno’s, whose reputations rest on their dough, and the cooks. Among the cooks, there are those whose pizzaioli express themselves through combinations of toppings that have never before occurred to anybody (Roberta’s, Paulie Gee’s) or a less exhibitionistic, farm-to-table sensibility, of which the late Franny’s was the paragon.

[Read about some of the best pizza in New York City.]

Razza, which burns wood, is one of the few that excel at both dough and toppings. Even if Ed and I had learned, after our seven-minute PATH ride from the World Trade Center to Grove Street, that the kitchen had run out of cheese, tomatoes and the rest, I would have asked for a pizza dressed with nothing but olive oil. I’m willing to bet it would be delicious that way, with the texture and flavor of naturally leavened bread right from the oven.

I was glad it didn’t come to that, though, because Razza dresses its pies with local ingredients so distinctive that every time I’ve eaten there, I’ve learned something about New Jersey farms.