Roberta’s Opens Slice Joint
By Ian MacAllen on Thursday, April 18th, 2024 at 3:51 pm
Roberta’s opened their slice shop R Slice over the weekend, offering up three New York style slices.
The shop, located at 257 Moore Street, is housed in what had been the takeout counter for Neapolitan pies and bakery items. It had a soft opening on Sunday, April 14th. There were a few not-pizza items available at the shop too, like biscuit sandwiches and these are expected to rotate.
Renovations of the space have pushed the old counter back a few feet and added in gas-fired pizza ovens for the New York style pies.
The bakery annex had at one time been a destination for breads, sticky buns, cookies, and take out. The shop also used to sell soft serve ice cream with high quality vanilla and unique flavors like corn.
Not too much has actually changed. There is still a Neapolitan style oven for take out pies, and plenty of Doordashers were lining up for delivery orders too. There was just one cafe table inside, along with the countertop style table in the middle of the room.
The outdoor beer garden is just next door and certainly in the summer months plenty of people will take slices to go and eat there. The formal Roberta’s restaurant is next to that.
Three slice styles are available at the shop. The chef on hand promised more varieties would rotate through as the shop expanded.
The cheese slice is like a classic margarita pizza rather than the traditional New York cheese slice. It’s good, but clearly taking cues from other upscale reinventions of the slice like L’Industrie. It’s not all that different than nearby pizzerias like Danny’s on Montrose and Bushwick, which also offers a margarita slice.
The pepperoni slice is the same, but topped with extra curly pepperoni. They were not as spicy as they could be.
The Fire and Ice slice uses stracciatella cheese and chili paste. This is a “destination slice” worth the trip. Like its name, it was cool creamy cheese alongside spicy tomato paste.
The Friday-only clam pie is not available by the slice — odd, for a slice shop.
The Neapolitan style pizzas are still available here too. The prices are noticeably higher than just a few years ago. These pies are from the classic Roberta’s menu, including the Bee Sting.
However, the shop does not offer or plan on offering a bee sting slice. This decision is a bit surprisingly given how popular the bee sting and similar pies have become. Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop is known for their Hellboy, a clear copycat of the bee sting starring Mike’s Hot Honey. Paulie Gee’s, like Roberta’s, started off as a neo-Neapolitan pie restaurant. The first Paulie slice shop opened two blocks from the restaurant, and is now expanding into an empire.
Roberta’s has grown substantially too, focused on Neo-Neapolitan pies, but its not unexpected to see them opening a slice shop a time when the New York Slice scene seeing a number of upscale, gourmet slices entering the market like L’Industrie, Scarr’s, Fini, and Paulie Gee’s.
At $4, the Roberta’s cheese slice is well above the $2.90 subway fare, breaking with tradition that a slice of pizza and subway fare were typically the same price, but it is on par with the other luxury slice joints.
Roberta’s posted on Instagram that the shop is looking to hire more cooks. For now its closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but probably will be open seven days a week once it staffs up.
