Pizza of the week is a cold-cheese slice at Little Vincent's in Huntington
The specialty at Little Vincent's Pizza of Huntington is a slice of regular pie topped with cold cheese. Credit: Newsday / Erica Marcus
A lean, mean pizza-making machine. That's Little Vincent's, the Huntington institution whose pies are a rebuke to every wood-fired, creatively topped pizza on Long Island. There are no pies on display here -- the ones destined for slices are hidden under the counter -- and the posted menu lists 11 toppings, the most exotic of which is meatball.
Little Vincent's undisputed specialty is the cold-cheese slice, in which a fresh-from-the-oven regular slice is topped with a fist-sized pile of cold shredded cheese. The cold cheese melts into the hot cheese and forms a soft, gluey, salty, mildly cheesy substance that is hard to stop eating -- partly because it's impossible to bite through. In for a bite, in for a mouthful.
One former Huntingtonian theorizes that the cold cheese topping was designed for late-night patrons whose powers of perception were compromised: the addition of the cold cheese brought the temperature of the pizza down to one that would not singe the roof of the mouth. In fact the place is open past 1 a.m. on most weeknights and until 3:30 a.m. on weekends, enshrining it as Huntington Village's inescapable late-night nosh spot.
Strip away the cold cheese and the lore, and you have a perfect specimen of the iconic crisp-crusted New York-style pizza.
Little Vincent's Pizza is at 329 New York Ave., Huntington, 631-423-9620.
