Josie's Pizza Bar shifts from truck to Glen Cove shop

Josephine Giglio doesn’t do anything the easy way and, after years of being a mobile pizzaiola, she was reluctant to move her operation inside. She’d parked her Josie's Pizza Bar truck across from the water in Glen Cove’s Garvies Point since 2022 and, she said, "a store didn’t excite me. I didn’t want to be like everyone else."

Nevertheless, she made her last pizzas on the truck last August and, two months later, opened in the adjacent storefront that had been Heritage Bakers, the popover specialist that closed in 2021. "We just outgrew the truck," she said, "and our customers were ready for the next thing."

Giglio, who has been slinging pies since she was in high school, had been using part of the Heritage space for prep and storage; now she created a light-filled, 20-seat dining area in the front and, facing the wood-burning oven, a proper pizza bar where six customers can sit and watch her and her crew create pizzas, panini, salads and, for the first time, a daily fresh pasta such as pappardelle Bolognese. They can even enjoy beer and wine. The five picnic tables from the truck set-up are still outside, making Josie’s the rare al fresco pizza destination on Long Island.

After sweltering during the summer and freezing in the winter, even Giglio has to admit that being indoors has its advantages: "The weather just doesn’t matter to us anymore — and it is nice not having to lug everything to the truck."

All the truck pizzas have stayed on the menu, from the simple Marg-A-Rita (with Italian tomatoes and fresh mozzarella from Brooklyn’s Lioni Latticini), the Boozy (with vodka sauce) and the Little Piggy (with tiny Battistoni "cup and char" pepperoni and lots of basil) to the more fanciful Honey Bomb (with Calabrian chili spread, hot soppressata and honey) and the frequent special, Gracefully Shroomed, a white pie with mushrooms and white truffle oil.

The pies themselves ($18 to $25) exhibit a blend of tradition and idiosyncrasy. They are cooked in a Neapolitan-style wood-burning oven but, instead of an airy-holey rim and a droopy middle, these pies are puffy throughout, with the fine-grained texture that comes from not fermenting the dough for days. Almost all ingredients are imported — from the Sicilian oregano branches that she shakes and sieves to the Sicilian sea salt, fine for the dough, coarse for sprinkling on salads. Giglio recently made the switch from Sicilian Partanna olive oil to Corto, grown and pressed in California’s Central Valley. "I couldn’t deny I liked it better," she conceded. "And, like I said, I like to go my own way."

Josie’s Pizza Bar, 1 Garvies Point Rd., Glen Cove, 646-918-4944, josiespizzabar.com. Open Wednesday to Saturday noon to 10 p.m., Sunday noon to 8 p.m.