L and B Spumoni Gardens

L & B Still Going Strong

I left Brooklyn so many years ago it's getting too hard to keep track. The one place that I absolutely always needed to return to was Spumoni Gardens. Long before there were countless TV shows with random hosts coming and drooling over the pizza served at L&B, this family owned establishment has always had a lot full of cars coupled with cars being double and triple parked out front. Go there on any warm day in the summer and you'll see that same scene. Go there in the winter and the lot's still full and there may be some double parked cars. Pizza is cooked and served equally as fast.

I have so many stories and memories of visits to this place it can fill a book. As a kid growing up in BK, I knew good pizza and I also knew that L&B was the pinnacle - for two reasons:

1. When we were moving to SI, my uncle stopped with my brother and I, double parked our moving truck out front, and we grabbed some squares because he said, "you'll never eat pizza like this out there." While I wasn't sure he'd ever been to Staten Island to back up his statement, I believed him. He also said "you'll never see girls like these outside of Brooklyn." On a mid-August day, that's a VERY hard claim to refute.

And, more importantly

2. I do not eat squares. EVER. Except from here. That is a fairly large statement.

Revisiting an earlier post, I do not like thick, doughy pizza. The squares at Spumoni Gardens are not too thick and have a signature crunch that is out of this world. For me the secret to the success of their squares is in the cooking. The dough receives a healthy drizzle of olive oil, followed by a generous coating of sliced mozzarella, and then covered in a sweet, delicious, thick pizza sauce. Ultimately, the squares shine because this sauce is amazing. Yes, the crust is typically crunchy and perfect. Yes the cheese is melted in nicely, forming a nice, gooey layer on top of the dough. But at the end of the day, it's love at first bite because the sauce is just that damn good.

When living in SI, before gas prices were insane and the toll on the VZ bridge was somewhat tolerable, I would make 2-3 trips a week to the Gardens for squares and spumoni. Why? Because the squares are that good and the spumoni is the perfect finish after knocking off a couple of squares.

Rating - 5/5. This is the absolute best square your money can buy and the homemade spumoni is peerless.

Their site - http://www.spumonigardens.com/

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