The Pizzeria opens in Babylon
A slice of Margherita pizza is paired with a margarita at the bar at The Pizzeria in Babylon. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
A Margherita pie washed down with a margarita — that’s what the owners of The Pizzeria in Babylon are betting on. The sixth location of this Suffolk chain opened in April and it’s the biggest one yet, with a 32-seat bar front and center in the 5,000-square-foot location that used to be Cooper Street.
“We realized that pizza and a drink is what people want,” said Paul Saccoccio, who owns The Pizzeria with his brother, Dan Saccoccio, and childhood friend Cliff Weinstein. “And the bar is where people want to hang out,” Weinstein added.
The Pizzeria got its start in 2020 as a small operation at Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, but successive shops — in Bayport, Islip, Lindenhurst and Bay Shore — have gotten progressively larger and more focused on a bar and dining scene. Walk into the Babylon venue and the back portion of the space is pure pizzeria, with a row of tables facing a wall of deck ovens and a counter display bursting with pies, calzone, rolls and knots. This area is separated by a low wall from a soaring, light-filled dining room whose quartz-topped tables and plush green booths surround a finely wrought floor-to-ceiling bar with 32 seats.
When The Pizzeria gutted the building, it moved Cooper Street’s main entrance to the back (facing the ample parking lot), leaving an unused space at the front that has been transformed into “the table,” a semiprivate room with one oversized round table that can be booked for meetings or special occasions.
Cliff Weinstein, left, and Paul Saccoccio, partners (with Paul's brother, Dan) at The Pizzeria in Babylon. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
The Saccoccios grew up in the pizzeria business — their family owns Gino’s Pizza of Ronkonkoma — and you can tell Paul is enchanted by the way a bar operates: “It’s its own little business and it generates its own income and there’s no food.” The Pizzeria's bar creates a new roster of cocktails ($13 to $15) every season. For the spring, there’s a martini with Ketel One, olive juice and blue-cheese-stuffed olives; the “Paloma Days” with tequila blanco, Campari, sparkling grapefruit, lime and a Tajin rim; McCartney’s Marg with silver tequila, blood orange, triple sec, lime and basil. Weinstein noted that the bar eschews typical “well liquor” in favor of name-brand spirits such as Tito’s tequila and Beefeater gin. There’s also a small but well-chosen wine list (with about 20 selections by the glass, $10 to $16) and eight beers on tap ($8 to $10).
The menu has everything you’d expect to find at a pizzeria, from personal, round and square pies to meatballs and fried calamari, pasta and Parms, heros and wraps. (Large pies range from $20 to $32, starters and salads $10 to $17, pastas from $18 to $20, mains $24.) As with the cocktails, there’s also a specials menu which, this spring, features such creative offerings as “vodka fritters” (deep-fried patties of spaghetti in vodka sauce with guanciale, $12), peach salad with Gorgonzola and candied pecans ($15), spaghettini with shrimp in a lemon-butter-garlic sauce ($23) and a chicken Parmesan whose sauce is vodka and cheese is stracciatella ($23).
217 E. Main St., Babylon, 631-314-4500, thepizzeriany.com. Open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. but the kitchen closes around 9 p.m.
