There are certain food-related rites of passage that come with living in New York City, and making the journey to Gravesend for L&B Spumoni Gardens is one of them. Maybe you grew up eating here, the feeling of having your thighs stuck to a too-hot outdoor bench while spumoni drips down your forearm synonymous with the early days of summer. Others come to it as adults, learning the ways of the square slice later in life, but never too late. This south Brooklyn staple, which has been around since 1935, is known for its pizza and frozen desserts—and their square slice is unlike any other in the city. It consists of a layer of molten cheese welded to a focaccia-like crust, with tangy-sweet sauce baked on top. If it’s your first time (and even if it’s not), we recommend coming here with a group so you can get pizza and spumoni but also try some of the other very good stuff on the menu. The most popular is way to eat here is to order at the to-go windows and sit outside. There’s a system to this, depending on what you want. First, you should send someone in your party to scope out a table, because, especially when the weather is nice, they can be hard to come by. If you’re just here for pizza, head directly to the window all the way to the left. If you’re planning on getting other stuff, like parmigiana sandwiches, you have to order from a separate to-go window inside, near the dining room. Finally, head to the middle window for dessert. You want spumoni, and you probably want a large. If you can’t resist the siren song of the creamsicle soft serve, we’ll allow it. Many people consider L&B to be just a casual pizza spot, but you must have the full experience indoors, at least once. The dining room is a rococo fever dream, and the food is as good as any red sauce joint in Brooklyn. They do a few things especially well, like rice ball parmigiana, eggplant rollatini, and any pasta with vodka sauce. Don’t worry—they serve square pies and spumoni inside, too. L&B is more than just a place to eat pizza that has no equal in any of the five boroughs. It’s a part of Brooklyn’s history. Here, you can forget that you live in the same New York City where smartphones have replaced metro cards and the median rent is $5,000 a month. You’ll picture yourself using a token to get back on the train at Avenue U before walking into a rent-controlled apartment that costs under a thousand bucks a month. The city will probably never be like that again, but at L&B, you can eat unrivaled pizza as you consider the possibility.