Best Lunch Pizza in the Upper East Side: What to Order at Two Boots

The best lunch pizza in the Upper East Side isn’t the one with the longest menu — it’s the one you can order, eat, and get out of inside a lunch break. Dinner pizza and lunch pizza are different problems. At dinner you have two hours and a table. At lunch you have forty minutes, possibly a coworker, and a strong preference for not waiting.

This is a guide to ordering lunch at Two Boots on 2nd Avenue: what to get by the slice, what works for a group, and what actually survives the walk back to a desk.

Key takeaways

• Slices are the lunch format. No wait, no commitment, no negotiating with whoever you’re eating with.
• The best lunch pizza in the Upper East Side is the one that’s ready when you are — order at the counter and you’re eating in minutes.
• The crust is cornmeal-dusted, which gives it a crunch that holds up better to a ten-minute walk than a softer base does.
• The menu is Cajun-Italian, not straight Italian. Crawfish, andouille, and jalapeños sit alongside the classics.
• Eight or so distinct vegan builds and gluten-free crust, so a mixed group doesn’t need a second stop.
• Doors open at 11am on weekdays, which covers an early lunch as well as a late one.

Why lunch is a different order from dinner

At dinner, the whole table is deciding together and there’s time to read the board. At lunch you want three things: speed, something that travels, and no argument.

That reframes what “best” means. The best lunch pizza in the Upper East Side isn’t necessarily the most elaborate pie on the menu — it’s the one that’s already hot, already sliced, and already waiting.

Your lunch	What to order	Time needed
Solo, 30 minutes	Two slices at the counter	Under 15 minutes
Solo, eating at a desk	Two slices to go, or a 10-inch pie	10 minutes plus the walk
Two people, catching up	Slices each, or split a 14-inch	30–45 minutes
Small team from a nearby office	Order ahead by phone, pick up	15 minutes at the counter
Office lunch for 10+	Catering	Order the day before
Weekend lunch with kids	Plain cheese or Grandma Bess, plus one adult slice each	As long as you want

The line most people get wrong is the fourth one. A group of five ordering individually at a counter at 12:30 is slower than one phone call at 11:45.

What to order at lunch

If you want it fast and familiar

Plain cheese or Grandma Bess, the thin square Sicilian with San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, basil, and mozzarella. Both are almost always cut and ready, which is the entire point at lunch.

Cleopatra Jones — sweet Italian sausage, roasted peppers, red onions — is the reliable step up. A sausage-and-pepper hero on a pizza base, and nothing about it will surprise you badly at 12:15.

If you want the thing this place is actually known for

The Bayou Beast: spiced shrimp, crawfish, andouille, and jalapeños. This is the original pie from 1987 and the clearest statement of what Two Boots is.

It’s also genuinely spicy, which matters at lunch in a way it doesn’t at dinner. If you’re heading back into a meeting, know what you’re signing up for.

If you want heat but not seafood

The Bird — buffalo chicken, blue cheese dressing, scallions, jalapeños on a white pie.

If you want no heat at all

Larry Tate: spinach, plum tomatoes, roasted garlic, ricotta, mozzarella. White pie, calm, no surprises.

If you’re vegan or eating with someone who is

V for Vegan — artichokes, red onions, shiitake mushrooms, two pestos, non-dairy cheese. Earth Mother is the bridge order: marked vegan, reads as a straightforward veggie pie, and the non-vegans at the table will eat it without noticing.

Why it tastes like that: the Cajun half

Two Boots is named for the boot shapes of Italy and Louisiana, and the Louisiana influence isn’t decorative. Crawfish, andouille, blackened seasoning, cornmeal in the crust — these come from a specific culinary tradition rather than a marketing idea.

Cajun cooking developed among the Acadians, French colonists expelled from what is now Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century, who resettled in south Louisiana and adapted their cooking to an entirely different landscape — a history the National Park Service documents at its Acadian cultural centers. What emerged was a cuisine built on what the bayou provided: crawfish, andouille, cayenne, and the rice and cornmeal that came with it.

Putting that on a New York pizza base in 1987 was a strange idea. It’s still a strange idea. It’s also why the best lunch pizza in the Upper East Side, at least here, doesn’t taste like everyone else’s.

What travels and what doesn’t

A real consideration if lunch is happening at a desk rather than at the counter.

The slice	Heat level	Travels well?
Plain cheese	None	Yes — the most forgiving option
Grandma Bess	None	Yes. Thin square crust stays crisp
Cleopatra Jones	None	Yes
Larry Tate	None	Reasonably — white pies soften faster
Mr. Pink	None	Yes
The Bird	Medium	Yes, but eat it sooner rather than later
The Bayou Beast	Hot	Best eaten at the counter — seafood doesn’t improve on a walk
V for Vegan	None	Yes

The cornmeal crust helps here. It holds a crunch on the bottom longer than a softer base does, which is the practical argument for it over a standard New York slice when the slice has to survive ten minutes in a box.

Group lunches and the office order

If you’re feeding a team, the two useful rules are order ahead and split the order rather than compromising it.

Two 10-inch pies — one vegan, one not — beat one 18-inch that half the group picks around. Whole pies come in 10, 14, and 18-inch, and for a group over five, two mediums almost always work better than one large.

For anything over ten people, catering is the better route than a large walk-in order — it’s sized properly, it arrives together, and nobody’s standing at a counter at noon doing mental arithmetic.

Getting there

Two Boots Upper East Side is at 1243 2nd Avenue, near East 65th Street. Weekday doors open at 11am, so an early lunch works as well as a late one, and weekend hours start at noon.

It’s counter-service and casual — no reservation, no planning, bright and loud enough that a working lunch is fine. For a fuller look at the room and what dine-in is like, our Upper East Side dine-in guide covers it.

Grab lunch on 2nd Avenue

For the best lunch pizza in the Upper East Side that doesn’t cost you your whole break, Two Boots is at 1243 2nd Avenue, near East 65th.

Walk in for slices, order online if you’re picking up on the way back, or call (646) 837-6015 for a group order you want ready when you arrive. Catering is available for office lunches and larger gatherings.

Frequently asked questions