You hear people’s tales of outer-borough travels to Di Fara in Brooklyn, but the Bronx deserves its own pizza paean, and Louie and Ernie’s is up to the task of making this borough the pizza destination it deserves to be recognized as (according to The New York Times, it actually started out in East Harlem in 1947 but moved to its current location in 1959).

Consider that just a few years ago, Adam Kuban wrote on the pizza blog, Slice, that the sausage and onion pie at Louie and Ernie’s is “the pizza to haunt your dreams.” He was right. It’s that can’t-wait-for-it-to-cool, burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth-it's-worth-it good. The sausage (made with 80-year-old recipes) comes from the S&D Pork Store four blocks down Crosby Avenue, and is applied in generous, juicy, fennel-spiked chunks barely held in place by copious amounts of melted cheese.

The only thing stopping this place from becoming a national destination is its location in the deep Bronx. No matter. Thanks to Cosimo and Johnny Tiso, who bought the place from Ernie Ottuso in 1987 (and who sell restaurant T-shirts for $5 a pop — when was the last time you saw that?) Louie & Ernie’s keeps turning out amazing pies to the locals who know they have a good thing.

— Arthur Bovino, 101 Best Pizzas in America 2015, 8/6/2015