At Anthony's Pizza and Pasta, if you get the right table, you have the best of both worlds...

Last month, while my colleagues scoured the state for the perfect pizza, my tasting panel and I conducted some research of our own, sampling wines to pair with delicious, homemade pies. We came up with some unusual picks. First up, the Austrian varietal wine, Zweigelt.

The Hudson and the East. Traversing both and continuing into the Midwood section of Brooklyn (a largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, ironically) brings you to one of the most famous pizzerias in New York, Di Fara. A definite schlep, but worth it...

Or, behold the bread! For pizza this good is indeed the staff of life...

The oven at Anthony's Pizza and Pasta on the Green in Morristown can handle eight large pies at once. In other words, it's a biggie. It runs at 550 degrees, and requires some serious ductwork to vent the excess heat...

Your faithful pizza explorer made it to Neptune City, where restaurants instead of a fork should give you a trident. Neptune, of course, is the home of the estimable Pete & Elda's...

Doing my due diligence for our upcoming pizza issue, I'm scouting the best pizza joints in the state. Just went to Bayonne on a reader's recommendation to experience the thin crust pie at Venice Restaurant. It was excellent, but so was this little corridor between the bar and the outdoor seating area...

Having finished his dough, master pizza chef Antonino Esposito, visiting restaurant A Mano in Ridgewood from Naples, Italy, demonstrated the correct way to turn a bowl full of whole peeled Italian tomatoes (pomodoro) into sauce for his classic Neapolitan-style pizza...

Antonino Esposito, a star of the Food Network in Italy and a renowned pizza chef of the style practiced in Naples, gave a demonstration at A Mano in Ridgewood yesterday...

..if you violate these rules.

In New Jersey, where pizza reigns supreme, and no hometown strip mall or downtown exists without a favored slice-a-teria…we are passionate about our pies.