New York-style pizza is a large, thin-crusted pizza that evolved from the classic Neapolitan-style pizza, brought to New York City by Italian immigrants during the early 1900s. The dish began with the opening of America's first pizzeria, called Lombardi's, where the owner Gennaro Lombardi served unusually large and wide pizza pies.

When sliced, the pieces are also very large and wide, while the crust is crispy, yet foldable for easier consumption. Some claim that the unique texture of the crust owes much to the minerals that are only found in New York City's tap water. Traditionally, the pizza is topped with mozzarella and heavily-seasoned tomato sauce (olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, sugar, salt, oregano, crushed red pepper, basil), while the additional ingredients such as vegetables or sausage come on top of the cheese. 

In the United States, Sicilian pizza denotes a thick, square-shaped dough topped with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce. The sauce is often placed on top of the cheese in order for the crust to be well-cooked. This pizza was brought to the United States (primarily New York) by Sicilian immigrants, and it was derived from sfincione.

Although sfincione doesn't contain mozzarella, Italian bakeries in NYC had access to inexpensive mozzarella so it was only logical that they began to top their sfincione with it. Nowadays, Sicilian-style pizza is popular in numerous Italian-American communities in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.