Prince Street Pizza
The Spicy Spring is a Sicilian square under Fra Diavolo sauce, spicy sopressata and fresh mozzarella. Frank Morano owns the trademark on its name.43 The Infatuation then pulled the shop off its lists after reporting racist conduct by its owners.1
Why go
The shop opened in 2012, on Prince Street between Elizabeth and Mott. The original Ray's Pizza had held the room.34 Eater describes the square as an airy, crisp crust under a garlic-spiked spicy sauce and curled pepperonis. The line formed for that one slice.3
Hannah Albertine reported the case for The Infatuation. Joe Rosenthal had surfaced accounts of identity-based mistreatment of customers. He also surfaced the shop's own racist replies on Yelp and racist posts from co-owner Dominic Morano's Facebook page.1 Frank and Dominic Morano stepped down from day-to-day operations, the manager took over, and both men apologized.1
The consequence is still on a live page. Bryan Kim's pizza guide runs to twenty-six shops in this city and Prince Street is not one of them.6 Nobody has scored the cooking since, and I am not going to write a score from the reputation.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Spicy Spring square, if you are on the block. Team Infatuation's line is that most people at this counter order the thick pepperoni cups.2
- Avoid: treating an old ranking as current.6
What locals & experts say
- Hannah Albertine, in The Infatuation, on what the publication did about it:
As a direct response to this reporting, however, we've edited our original review, and removed Prince Street Pizza from our Best-Of lists and other guides.
1 - Frank Morano, quoted in the same report:
There is nothing okay about the comments I made on Yelp,
he said in a statement.I take full responsibility and wholeheartedly apologize to our customers, especially our Asian community.
1 - Bryan Kim, the Infatuation's NYC editorial lead, rating Mama's Too 8.8 on the Upper West Side: that square is the same idea done well, and
Mama's Too has something Prince St. doesn't: triangular slices worth going out of your way for.
7
Good to know
- The other square: Frank Badali left this kitchen and put his version on Amsterdam Avenue at Made In New York Pizza, with Eytan Sugarman. Morano went after him over a confidentiality agreement; Sugarman says the recipe changed.3
- The queue: Laura Ratliff still called it a line-around-the-block shop in Time Out in September 2025.5
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Not one of my saves.
Verdict
could-visit — Judge the apology by where the shop filed it. The statement named no incident and went into the press section, and the family kept the business. I would rather put the money on Amsterdam Avenue.