New Jersey does not hand out the title of “best pizza” lightly. In a state where nearly every town has a pizzeria worth defending with your life, standing out takes more than a good crust. It takes a story, a point of view, and food that backs up the hype. Ferrari Pizza & Italian Kitchen, tucked into Flemington, has all three, and at the center of it is a chef whose big personality matches the big flavors coming out of his kitchen, Chef Joe.
A Family Business Built Since 1975
Ferrari Pizza & Italian Kitchen isn’t a concept dreamed up overnight. The Ferrari family has been in the pizza and restaurant business since 1975, spending decades working in other people’s kitchens before finally opening a place of their own in Flemington. That patience shows. Rather than chasing trends or trying to be everything to everyone, the family built a tightly focused menu designed around flavor, freshness, and creativity, the kind of approach that takes years in the industry to trust.
The result is a cozy, 28-seat dining room that has become a fast local favorite, built on warm atmosphere, superior ingredients, and consistently well-prepared dishes. It blends the speed of counter service with the kind of hospitality that makes first-time visitors feel like regulars from the moment they walk in. As the restaurant puts it, “every plate tells a story, and every guest is family,” and that ethos runs through everything from the slice case up front to the dinner menu in back.
Sicilian Roots Meet Jersey Classics
Behind the counter is Chef Joe, whose culinary résumé and deep love for his Sicilian roots shape nearly everything on the menu. Ferrari’s food maps out like a storybook of the Ferrari family’s journey, from ancestral beginnings in Sicily to modern, Jersey-style takes on pizza and pasta. That means diners get the expected New Jersey staples alongside genuinely old-world touches that are harder to find outside of Sicily itself.
The clearest example is the sfincione, a Sicilian-style square pizza built on an airy crust, bright plum tomato sauce, a light layer of cheese, and (the defining detail) a scattering of toasted breadcrumbs on top. It’s a pizza most people have never encountered, and one that delivers a toasty aroma and a textural crunch that a standard square slice simply doesn’t have. It’s not an easy style to find done well, which makes Ferrari’s version worth the trip on its own.
The rest of the slice case backs that up: plain pie, pan pizza, chicken francese slices, pepperoni, garlic knots, buffalo chicken, and a round slice topped with sausage, pepperoni cups, and Mike’s Hot Honey that manages to feel fresh even amid a well-worn hot honey trend.
Beyond the Slice
Ferrari’s ambitions extend well past pizza. The kitchen turns out house-baked semolina bread that anchors dinners and sandwiches, along with a chicken parm and a meatball parm stuffed with zesty tomato sauce and melted mozzarella. The meatballs, covered in tomato sauce and dollops of ricotta, carry the kind of old-school, grandfather ’s-recipe quality that any Jersey Italian will recognize as high praise.
The broader menu keeps the Sicilian-meets-Jersey theme going, with battered and fried calamari, baked clams, veal piccata, and chicken Florentine rounding things out. Chef Joe is also known for sending out extras unprompted, like fried cauliflower with a healthy dusting of grated Parmigiano, a habit that reflects the restaurant’s larger instinct for hospitality. Feed people well, then feed them a little more.
And no meal at Ferrari is complete without dessert. The fried zeppole, dusted in powdered sugar, delivers the kind of yeasty, carnival-fresh flavor that turns a satisfying meal into a memorable one.
Worth the Trip
Ferrari Pizza & Italian Kitchen may be new to Flemington, but between the Ferrari family’s decades of experience and Chef Joe’s Sicilian-rooted menu, it already carries itself like an institution. It’s the kind of place that earns loyalty one slice, one plate of meatballs, and one unexpected extra course at a time, and in a state as particular about its pizza as New Jersey, that’s no small feat. From Brooklyn kitchens to a 28-seat dining room in Flemington, Chef Joe and the Ferrari family have built a spot that stands out in a state that takes its pizza seriously.
