Northport Village finally has a place to walk in and order a slice. La Porta by the Slice, the takeout and delivery pizzeria from the team behind the brick-oven Italian restaurant La Porta on Main Street, is open at 40 Woodbine Ave., a short walk up from the harbor in one of the village's most recognizable old buildings.

The shop confirmed the opening on its own pages at the end of September, and it is now running a full week: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and until 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. The counter handles takeout and delivery, with slices, fresh large pies, garlic knots, pinwheels and the rest of the traditional pizzeria canon.

Born from a question the restaurant could not answer

La Porta built its reputation on Main Street with whole pies cooked to order in a brick oven, the kind of pizza that comes to a table, not a napkin. That format left one request permanently unfulfilled: customers kept wanting to grab a single slice, and the restaurant was never set up to sell one.

Owner Rob Simmons has said the answer was always going to be a second spot rather than a workaround, and that he waited for the right storefront to open up in the village. He has also been clear about who the shop is really for: a kid should be able to park a bike out front and walk out with a slice. Woodbine Avenue, which connects the village's working harbor to the foot of Main Street, is about the best address on the North Shore for exactly that.

Two storefronts, one old-school pizzeria

The new shop sits in the historic LILCO building, the old Long Island Lighting Company property that anchors Woodbine Avenue, and it joins two former businesses into one space: the old Duke's storefront and the neighboring Carberry space. Counter service runs at the south entrance, there is seating on the north side with a view toward the harbor, and outdoor seats catch the village foot traffic in between.

The design leans deliberately old school. Simmons has described the look as a nod to the classic neighborhood pizzeria, down to colors that echo the Italian flag, and the kitchen runs a double-deck oven, the workhorse of the slice trade, rather than the wood-fired brick oven up the hill. The menu follows the same logic: plain cheese and Sicilian squares hold down the core of the lineup, with specialty slices rotating alongside them.

A village that keeps adding reasons to walk it

The slice shop lands in a Northport that has been stacking up new reasons to linger. The Marin opened in September in the marina corner the Britannia and the Whale's Tale once held. Symi brought a full Greek menu to the Fort Salonga Road corner that could not hold a tenant. Mimi's is set to open across from the Engeman Theater on Main Street. A mahjong parlor took a Main Street address over the summer. For a village a few blocks deep, the downtown keeps punching several weight classes up.

What was missing from that list was the most basic food a Long Island downtown can offer. Northport has pizza, and good pizza, but the village core did not have a true grab-and-go slice counter, the kind of place that feeds a Little League team, a dock worker on a half hour break and a family coming off a boat without anyone needing a table or a reservation.

What it means if you live here

It means the walk from the dock to Main Street now passes a lit pizza counter seven days a week, open late enough to catch a show crowd leaving the Engeman on a Saturday night. It means delivery pizza in the village from the same hands that run one of its better regarded kitchens. And it means the harborfront's evening routine of dock walks and park benches gets the one addition nobody was going to argue with.

La Porta by the Slice is at 40 Woodbine Ave. in Northport Village, open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, for takeout and delivery.