At Appetito, we avoid rankings and declarations of “the best” anything. We consider cuisine to be, by and large, subjective, so we merely recommend the places that we enjoy and do our best to explain why. When we recommend pizza places in New York City, we always include our pal Anthony Mangieri and his Una Pizza Napoletana. We do, though, recognize that rankings, formal and informal, exist within the media space of Italian cuisine, including pizza.
As storytellers, we are curious about the consistent success of Una Pizza Napoletana, especially in the coveted awards of the 50 Top Pizza organization who have ranked Anthony’s Lower East Side pizzeria #1 in the US and worldwide every year since 2022 (with the exception of a second-place international finish in 2024). With the 2026 US title already secured, we wanted to chat with Anthony on the dawn of his departure for Naples where the worldwide ceremony will be held this Tuesday night (9/15).
What is your mindset going into past competitions and this year’s worldwide 50 Top in particular?
Well, you know, quite honestly, I never assume anything. I'm always kind of surprised if I win, and I don't ever go in thinking that I’m going to get first place. I don't know if I deserve first place. I do know that I work, like, 17 hours a day. I make every single dough ball. I bake every single pizza. I'm staring into the oven all night long, losing my mind, pissed off and stressed out about the dough or the fire or the way the floor is handling the heat or that the mozzarella isn't the texture that I wanted it to be this week, and I'm so just consumed with the day-to-day grind that I don’t generally have time to worry about competitions and where we place.
I can tell you this: I will outwork anybody. That's all I can say. I know that I work hard, and I put every ounce of myself into this, and I walk out of here at the end of the night with my feet hurting, my back hurting, my brain hurting, my face, my eyes, everything. I can't communicate or hold a thought straight by the end of the night. I go home, and I'm destroyed. I go to bed. I get up. Maybe I cycle. Maybe I do a cold plunge and some breathing exercises. Somehow, I get fired up again, and I come back thinking that today is going to be the best day ever here, and I'm going to finally pull it all together, and it's going to be what I've always dreamed it would be, and it's not. And I go through the motions, and I get to the end, and I just keep repeating this for now 30 years.
How is the vibe when you’re in Naples for the contest?
In a lot of ways, Naples is like my second home. I don't presume that everyone there loves me or thinks I should get first place or is supportive of what I do, but I would say the overall vibe that I've always gotten is just a lot of love and support. I'm not a community-centered kind of guy. It's just not my nature. I'm a private person, and I stick with my little circle. But I would say it's always beautiful when we're there, and it always touches me because I've been going to Naples my whole life, and it's a place that I have a lot of love for. A lot of great things in my life have stemmed from Naples, from my inspiration, from my family coming from Campania, from just everything. So, I embrace it. On a more general level, I think the pizza world has changed over the years. And I think when I'm there, there's an openness that feels refreshing.
To what do you attribute that change?
I was thinking about this the other day. There should be accolades towards Barbara, Luciano, and Albert - the group who created 50 Top - in the sense that what they've done is create a platform, in a relatively short time, that has pushed the pizza industry in the sense that it's brought people together from all over the world yearly. The result is that it's raised the level of pizza around the world in a lot of ways. Things have changed, and a lot of it has to do with social media, and a lot of it has to do with organizations like 50 Top that have created these platforms where the world's looking and being like, "Ooh, that place is on the list. That's amazing!” So, that's pretty cool. And I think that sentiment, that mentality, has kind of spread around to everyone in Naples and everywhere. A lot of people in Naples make a good living running pizzerias and restaurants with a lot of tourists that go there. A big reason people go to Naples is to eat. It’s good for everybody.
Over the past five years, The 50 Top Pizza list of winners changes every year with one exception: Una Pizza Napoletana is always at (or near) the top both in the US and internationally. Do you have any idea what truly differentiates you from all the other great pizza makers?
The one thing that we can all focus on is facts. Taste and opinion and all that stuff are not facts. But we can focus on one fact: Has anyone on that list made every single dough ball and made every single pizza for the past 30 years? No. That's a fact. Maybe that's the difference. I can't speak to anything else, but I can speak to that fact. I mean, there's tons of great pizza all over the place, but maybe the idea behind Una, this pursuit for 30 years without wavering, represents something that is good for pizza. We're not following trends. We're not swerving to the left or swerving to the right. It's always: We're doing this, and I don't care if we have any customers or if we have a line out the door. We're going to keep pushing forward and keep trying to do this no matter what. And we can say that as a fact.
Anything else?
Yes. I have absolutely zero loyalty to any ingredient or product, and I think that’s a lot different from many other folks. My loyalty is to the pizza being what I want it to be, and that's it. So, if you're a Buffalo Mozzarella producer that I've been buying from for 20 years, and your cheese starts sucking, our business is done. If you're a flour producer, and the flour doesn't work for me anymore, it doesn't make the pizza the way I want, we're done.
Are we done?
I think so.
Enjoy Naples. In bocca al lupo.
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