I’m Italian, and there are a few things I’ve learned not to expect here. Good coffee at a gas station, for one. Bread that tastes like bread. And, hardest of all, a real Neapolitan pizza.
That sounds dramatic, I know. America has no shortage of pizza, and some of it is excellent in its own way: the New York slice, the big pies from the corner shop, the frozen ones that got a lot of us through college. But that’s a different food, with a different idea behind it. A Neapolitan pizza is soft and a little wet in the middle, with a puffy, blistered crust and only a few ingredients on top. It comes out of a very hot oven in about a minute. You eat it with a knife and fork, or fold it like a wallet, and you don’t save the crust for later.
When I want that, I drive to Ridgewood.
A word about pepperoni
First, a confession about my early days in this country. The first time someone offered me a pepperoni pizza, I expected peppers.
That’s not a joke. In Italian, peperone is a bell pepper, and peperoni is the plural. If you walk into a pizzeria in Italy and ask for a “pizza ai peperoni,” you’ll get a pizza covered in red and yellow peppers, and the waiter won’t think anything of it. Plenty of Italians who come to the U.S. make the same mistake I did, at least once.
What Americans call pepperoni is something else entirely. It’s a cured sausage, but it isn’t Italian. It was invented here, by Italian-American butchers in New York in the early 1900s; the first written mention of it dates to 1919. Those butchers couldn’t get the ingredients they had at home, so they worked with what they found, including smoked paprika and chili. The result is the bright red, slightly smoky, oily slice that curls into little cups in the oven. Americans love it. A 2023 Tasting Table report put it at around a third of pizzas ordered in this country.
Italian salame is a different world. There isn’t one salame in Italy but dozens, and they change from region to region and sometimes from town to town: sweet or spicy, coarse or fine, flavored with fennel, garlic, wine or black pepper. They don’t taste of paprika, and they don’t taste like pepperoni. The closest thing you’ll find back home is a salame piccante, a spicy salame from the south, and even that is a cousin, not a twin.
So when I sit down for pizza here, I’m not looking for pepperoni. I’m looking for the pizza I grew up with.
S.Egidio, on North Broad Street
S.Egidio Pizze Salumi Espresso has been at 17 North Broad Street since 2014. It’s a small place. On a busy night the tables are close together, the music is up, and the room hums the way a good pizzeria in Italy does. When the weather is nice, there’s seating outside.
The heart of it is a wood-fired oven. The dough is a natural sourdough, fermented slowly, and you can taste the difference. The crust, the cornicione, puffs up light and airy, with a few dark, charred spots from the fire. Some people send those spots back thinking the pizza is burnt. It isn’t. That’s what a wood oven does, and in Naples nobody would complain.
The menu reads like a menu from home. There’s a Marinara, the oldest Neapolitan pizza of all: just tomato, garlic, oregano and basil, no cheese. There’s the Margherita, with fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil and olive oil, which is the test of any pizzeria. If the Margherita is good, everything else will be. Here it is.
From there you can go anywhere. The Regina uses bufala mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. The Capricciosa has mushrooms, artichokes, olives and prosciutto cotto, the way it’s made in Italy. The Bianca has no tomato at all, just mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino, parmigiano and garlic. And if you like a little heat, the Fiamma has hot soppressata and chile honey. That, by the way, is my answer for the American friends who ask where the pepperoni is.
Start with the salumi
The name says Pizze Salumi Espresso, and the middle word matters. In Italy, you don’t sit down and order a pizza straight away. Somebody orders a board for the table first, and everyone picks at it while they talk.
At S.Egidio, that’s the Antipasto della Casa, a rotating selection of imported Italian cured meats and cheeses. Because it rotates, it changes from visit to visit. The times I’ve had it, there was real mortadella, the soft, pale pink kind from Bologna that tastes of nothing you can buy sliced in a supermarket here. There’s also prosciutto, imported and served plainly, which is exactly right, and bresaola, the cured beef, with arugula and shaved parmigiano.
The cheeses deserve their own line. The mozzarella is pulled in-house and served with olive oil. The truffle pecorino comes with a drizzle of local honey, a combination that sounds odd until you try it. The burrata comes with prosciutto di Parma, arugula and tomato. Order the bread, too: a sourdough flatbread with olive oil and flaky salt, and add the whipped ricotta to spread on it.
And finish the Italian way, with an espresso. Not a giant coffee to carry around, but a small, strong cup at the table, maybe a macchiato. S.Egidio takes its coffee seriously, and it shows. Afterwards, I usually sit for a few more minutes than I need to. It feels like home.
Plan your visit
I go to S.Egidio every time I want a good pizza, and I’ve learned a couple of things. They don’t take reservations, so seating is first come, first served. On Friday and Saturday nights, that can mean a wait. If you’d rather eat at home, you can order online for pickup.
- Address: 17 North Broad Street, Ridgewood
- Phone: 201-389-3525
- Reservations: not accepted; first come, first served.
- Takeout: order through the restaurant’s website
Hours
| Day | Hours |
|---|---|
| Tuesday–Thursday | 4–10 p.m. |
| Friday–Saturday | Lunch 1–4 p.m.; dinner 5–11 p.m. |
| Sunday | 1–8 p.m. |
| Monday | Closed |
Parking: metered street parking and municipal lots downtown; Ridgewood meters take payment through the ParkMobile app. Check the signs for current hours and rates.
Website: segidio.pizza
The menu also has pastas (rigatoni, linguine, pappardelle and gnocchi), salads, and starters such as house meatballs with ricotta, wood-fired shrimp and octopus. I always end up back at the pizza.
Information checked October 2026. Hours and menus change, so check the restaurant’s website before you go.
Sources and photography
- S.Egidio Pizze Salumi Espresso: official menu, opening hours, reservation policy and restaurant background.
- Google Maps listing for S.Egidio: Monday closure and telephone, checked October 16, 2026 in the supplied article.
- Brian Udall, Tasting Table: “The Unexpected American Origins Of Pepperoni,” December 29, 2023.
- ParkMobile: paying for parking in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Photography: Tommaso Potrich. Images taken at S.Egidio in Ridgewood. View the full image.
