What happened in Bushwick didn’t stay in Bushwick.
It took fabled Roberta’s 15 years, but the pizza paradise’s wood-fired ovens landed with a blast in the Penn Station/Madison Square Garden zone last month — a culinary and cultural upheaval that might change perceptions of the area’s fast-food commuter hell.
Amazingly, the pizza, pasta and other Italian dishes that thrill customers at the cramped but cozy, wood- and-stoned-framed original Roberta’s tasted every bit as wonderful in an expansive setting above the new neighborhood’s nonstop traffic and construction chaos.
The city’s slowest elevator — I almost pushed the emergency button, certain it had conked out — takes you to the indoor-outdoor second floor with 220 seats, more than half of them outside.
The place to be is the al-fresco patio, set with picnic tables and surrounded by Manhattan grit, office towers and giant advertising signs. If the view of a 30-foot-tall Alicia Keys isn’t for you, opt for the glass-wrapped indoor room. The lack of atmosphere won’t interfere with enjoyment of what’s on the plate.
Owners Carlo Mirarchi and Brandon Hoy made a deal with Vornado Realty Trust, first reported in The Post in 2022, to launch the two-level Roberta’s in a small new building called 1 Penn East, tucked off West 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, which was turned into a welcoming pedestrian mall.
Vornado is spending megabucks to bring new energy to the West 30s, where the firm has redesigned office buildings, demolished the Hotel Pennsylvania for future development and launched new stores and eateries — even pickleball courts — for a younger, more sophisticated clientele.
Even so, I was skeptical that the new Roberta’s would live up to the original. But the kitchen crew has the drill down.
Executive chef Sam Pollheimer oversees the same kind of ovens as the ones in Brooklyn that turn out pizzas in around 90 seconds at 800 degrees. A second oven on the ground floor is for takeout, which includes orders by the slice.
The classic margherita pie ($22) was the same 12-inch masterpiece I knew in Brooklyn: the thin crust beautifully blistered and the fresh tomato sauce, creamy house-made mozzarella, basil and olive oil arrayed in delicious harmony.
But enunciate clearly when you order. Once when I asked for it at lunch, they brought me a margarita instead.
“Oops,” the waitress laughed. “They sound the same.”
You can doll up the pies with no fewer than 18 toppings, from honey to soppressata ( ($1, $3 or $5 each) , but they’re fine without them.
I loved the all-white, buffalo mozzarella pie, oddly called Alt Normcore ($27) and laden with the juiciest Sungold tomatoes ever. The four pizza varieties, which include the chili-sparked Bee Sting ($25) from Bushwick, are hard to finish after starting with salted flatbread steamed to a balloon like Indian poori and accompanied by creamy stracciatella cheese, anchovies and “cultured” butter — a $31 splurge I could have every day.
The menu changes often. The one they served the other night was vastly different from the one on Roberta’s Web site. But if it’s still there when you go, don’t miss lobster spaghettini ($32), an al dente, gremolata breadcrumbs-sprinkled delight worthy of former Marea chef Michael White.
Sungolds lightened the chewy, rustic heft of Heritage porchetta ($36), presented in a pair of crescent-shaped wedges edged with just enough fat for added sweetness.
The party will shrink when cold weather forces the feast indoors. So go now and learn how good pizza tastes with Alicia Keys looking hungry over your shoulder.
