Two New York pizzerias, both alike in dignity, prospered in the Big Apple as coal-fired descendants of the same famed Italian ancestor: Pasquale “Patsy” Lancieri, the inventor of by-the-slice pizza.

Rest in pizza. Patsy Grimaldi, who was credited with launching NYC’s coal-fire, brick-oven pizza craze in the 1990s from his Brooklyn pie shop, died of natural causes Thursday night, according to ...