To some, a slice of Brooklyn means a stroll down the Coney Island boardwalk or a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. To others, it means eating the best pizza on the planet.

With seventy-one square miles, 2.5 million people, and more miles of elevated train track than Manhattan, Brooklyn is a crossroads of both culture and cuisine—and capable of consuming a surprising percentage of the three billion pizzas eaten by Americans annually. So says Tony Muia, a one-time health professional whose “Slice of Brooklyn” tour takes five hours, covers 50 miles, and gives participants a chance to jump the 90-minute lines at Grimaldi’s, a historic pizzeria featuring coal-fired pies perfected in brick-lined ovens.

The Tour Begins
At Grimaldi’s, the first stop on Muia’s tour, ovens heated to 1200 degrees burn 18 tons of coal per year and push out pizzas every two-and-a-half minutes. Ownership is serious about its product: a combination of anthracite, a clean-burning coal imported from Pennsylvania, and mineral-laden New York water, certified by a chemist. Some other essential ingredients are home-made mozzarella, hand-tossed dough, and tomato sauce produced from a closely-guarded secret recipe.

The same formula is used at all Grimaldi’s locations: in nearby Queens, Long Island, and Hoboken, New Jersey, as well as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Texas. Even the famed New York water is included.

Because it is a local landmark, just steps from the East River between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and because it was the first Grimaldi’s, the Brooklyn location is a legend to both residents and visitors. The only way to get around the lines is to join Muia’s tour, which has the rare privilege of time-reserved tables. It’s tight quarters—for sitting, eating, and even venturing to the unisex restroom—but the taste of the pizza is such pure heaven that it is well worth the squeeze.

Just don’t try to take pictures of the coal-fired oven—Grimaldi’s staff is quick to quash would-be shutterbugs before they can snap a photo of the open kitchen in action.

Could Grimaldi’s be worried about industrial spies after operating from the same location for more than a century? It has certainly hit upon a successful formula, re-lighting its ovens around 4 p.m. daily and serving a variety of Italian fare on wooden tables topped with traditional red-and-white checkered tablecloths.

The Muia group gets Margherita pizza, known for matching the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. It gained its name after Queen Margherita of Savoy applauded the dish when it was served to her during a visit to Naples in 1899—10 years after cheese was added to a round tomato-based dish called the Neopolitan pie. That was the first true version of today’s pizza.

Spurred by sparkling taste buds, word spread quickly. Lombardi’s, the first American pizzeria, opened on Manhattan’s Spring Street in 1905 and others—including Grimaldi’s—soon followed.

The Second Stop
L & B Spumoni Gardens, the second food stop on Muia’s tour, was a relative latecomer. It started in 1938 after Italian immigrant Ludovico Barbati made a small fortune selling hand-made spumoni and ices from a horse-drawn wagon in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood. He purchased a building on 86th Street, later set up outdoor tables, and eventually added two more buildings. One of those, a pizzeria that opened in the ’50s, began churning out thick Sicilian pies.

Tony Muia’s customers get two slices each, as they do at Grimaldi’s, and usually get samples of the restaurant’s award-winning fried calamari appetizer, too. If time permits, many purchase the spumoni that gave the restaurant its start.

Famous Street Sightings
Western culture is king on the “Slice of Brooklyn” tour. Muia not only shows his bus passengers movies filmed on-location in Brooklyn but times them to coincide with the exact moments the bus is on the actual site. They see the cobblestone streets of DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), where the blind Al Pacino drove a convertible in “Scent of a Woman.” They can imagine the harried Gene Hackman chasing a crook under the elevated tracks in “The French Connection.” And they can almost see John Travolta’s strut down 86th Street during the opening credits of “Saturday Night Fever.”

In Coney Island alone, the bus passes Keyspan Park, a minor-league ballpark with a statue honoring Brooklyn Dodgers stars Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese; the towering Cyclone, a 1927 vintage roller-coaster that thrills kids but scares adults; and the original Nathan’s, opened in 1916 but still going strong. It is the home of a televised hot-dog eating contest every July 4. There’s never a dull moment and only a few quiet ones—when people are eating pizza.

Dan Schlossberg is travel editor of New Jersey Lifestyle and Sirius XM Radio’s Maggie Linton Show and author of 35 baseball books, including The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners? He is also president emeritus of NATJA.