There are almost 75,000 pizzerias in the US, and the granddaddy of them all is Lombardi’s, an unassuming place opened more than a century ago at 32 Spring Street, in New York’s Little Italy. Its coal-fired oven, installed in the early 1900s, produces a chewy, blistered crust markedly different from the moister wood-fired Neapolitan version.

For Lombardi’s signature margherita pizza ($18.50-$22.50) that base gets a simple, classic topping of tomato sauce and creamy rounds of mozzarella. Garnished with fresh basil, the pie is a refreshing throwback to the days before pizza came strewn with ingredients you couldn’t pronounce.

“Some pizzerias add five or six toppings, but this one delivers so much flavour with no nonsense,” said Scott Wiener, founder of Scott’s Pizza Tours, who includes Lombardi’s on his itineraries.

The brick dining room is papered with photographs of key figures in the restaurant’s history, and one adviser to the business is the grandson of founder Gennaro Lombardi, who arrived in New York from Naples in the 1890s. As with many Italian immigrants, Lombardi opened a grocery store and sold pizza as a way to use up leftover dough and cheese. But his pies were so sought after that he opened the country’s first restaurant dedicated entirely to pizza.

According to Weiner, if you couldn’t afford a whole 5¢ pizza, the staff would cut you a slice. Today, pizzas are only served whole (and cost more than 5¢), but in a time when trendier, food-fad pizzerias fill the surrounding blocks, Lombardi’s old-school ambience offers a nostalgic glimpse of a disappearing New York.

• 32 Spring Street, NY 10012, +1 212 941 7994, firstpizza.com