NYC Restaurants: Big Apple Is Best Pizza City (Again) + Theater Union

NEW YORK CITY — Prepare for some unsurprising, but still appetizing news: New York City got named the best pizza city in America.

The thoroughly obvious — at least to Gotham gourmands — honor is only one morsel of food news from this past week.

Patch's small local newsroom, as always, scanned the culinary landscape to serve up the best bit.

Here's an assortment of tasty food news. Come back next week for second.

New York City reigned supreme in a new, 250-city ranking of the best pizza burgs in the U.S.

The city's number one ranking admittedly didn't come as a shock for the writers of a study by Pizzelo, a maker of outdoor pizza ovens.

After all, New York is home to the nation's first pizzeria, the study notes.

"This long-standing tradition means that New York doesn’t just make pizza; it lives and breathes pizza," the study states.

"This is evident in the generations of family-owned pizzerias that dot the cityscape, each with its own story and a secret recipe that's a slice of New York's history."

The "250 Best Cities In America For Pizza" study, however, had some head scratchers that could leave the city's prideful pizza neighbors in New Jersey feeling burned.

Case in point: the number two pizza city was Tulsa, Oklahoma.

See the full list here

A union push at beloved dine-in Brooklyn cinema has an unlikely inspiration: Barbenheimer.

Workers at Nitehawk Cinema said the same-day releases of Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" showed them the need to unionize.

"Organizing was the only way to make our voices heard," Nitehawk server Alana Liu Moskowitz said.

• Nitehawk Cinema Workers Take Steps To Unionize In Brooklyn

Beyond the pizza and union happenings, new restaurants were slated to open.

One Bite Omakase will be opening at the site of a former Upper West Side pizzeria, its owners announced.

Described as "contemporary premium omakase" with a modest price point, the 13-course prix fixe menu will start at $89 per person for 60 minutes.

Across the park, Avenue Bakery had a weekend grand opening planned on the Upper East Side.

The family-run bakery will reunite formerly subdivided spaces — recently home to Zazzy's Pizza, Nook Room and café Innocent Yesterday's, all of which closed last fall — and restore the corner to its pre-2020 status as an inviting café and bakery.

• New UWS Omakase Spot Set To Replace Pizzeria
• New 'Avenue' Bakery To Open On Upper East Side Corner Saturday

And some restaurants simply had a bad time.

Irene's Place, a longstanding Greenpoint pub, officially closed after more than 40 years.

Finally, health inspectors ordered restaurants closed across Manhattan and this past week.

• NYC Restaurants Ordered Closed Feb. 2 - 9