New Long Island pizza trucks to try this season

As Long Island’s pizza culture rises to new heights, it has also become untethered to brick-and-mortar pizzerias. All over Nassau and Suffolk, pizzaioli are slinging pies from trucks equipped with wood-burning ovens, or even free-standing ovens mounted on towable trailers.

Most of LI’s mobile pizza units specialize in private events — and there’s no better way to get a party started than to have a pizza truck parked in your driveway — but a few of them have regular gigs in public spaces where there’s advance planning or deposit required.

NICO’S PIZZA

Mobility was not what Anthony Sorice was looking for when he established his pizza truck. The co-owner of the year-old Root + Branch brewery in Copiague was seeking a food option that would encourage people to stay longer and order more beer. After a few hired trucks failed to show, Sorice turned to his father, Frank, a former pizzaiolo who was now making wood-fired pies in his Wantagh backyard. His brother, Chris, came on board and, in February, the Sorice men backed their 20-by-8-foot behind the brewery and Nico’s Pizza, named for a beloved family dog, began to cook. The pies aren’t the only draw here: Root + Branch has a skylit tasting room with an outdoor patio (and really good beer).

JOSIE’S PIZZA BAR

Josephine Giglio started working in pizzerias while still in high school. The 110-pound chef says she sometimes wishes she could easily heft a 100-pound sack of flour. But she’s found her sweet spot in this truck which, despite being mobile, stays put in the newly redeveloped Garvies Point district of Glen Cove. Customers can dine in the landscaped picnic area adjacent to the truck, of walk across the street to the walkway that runs along Glen Cove Creek.

PIZZA PEDDLER

Born and raised in Sicily, Girolamo “Mommo” Maniscalchi had no particular interest in pizza until he moved to New York as a young man and began working in Italian restaurants. Eventually he landed a job with Grande Cheese Company, a pizzeria supplier. During the pandemic, he said he “started to make bread like everyone else” and that soon morphed into pizza. He found a used wood-burning oven for sale and after practicing at home for a few months, he loaded it onto a trailer that he could hitch to his VW Tiguan. Now, on most weekends, he ignites the wood at home in East Norwich and then drives (carefully) to the day’s destination while the logs burn down and bring the oven up to temperature.

VINCENT'S NEW YORK WOOD-FIRED PIZZA

As pandemic regulations descended on Long Island in 2020, Vincent DeMarzo found himself with a worst-case-restaurant scenario: his health-food cafe was located inside a gym that was closed for months. And so, the former pizza maker returned to his first love and "pulled the trigger" on a long-deferred dream of owning a pizza truck. In August, he parked it in a lay-by along Route 347 in East Setauket and pretty soon he was so busy, he had to draft his wife, Andrea DeMarzo, a marine biologist, to join him. In November, he moved to the big, well-lit parking lot of the gym on Mark Tree Road where his juice bar was — he was able to use the kitchen for prep and storage — and settled in. Nearly three years later, Vincent’s popularity has spawned a second truck that caters events so that the original fire-engine-red one can reside semi-permanently on Mark Tree Road.