Could the Roberta’s at Penn Station Be the City’s Best New Italian Spot? (2024)

With its chummy atmosphere and eclectic decor, memories of the Bushwick original from its early days in 2008 filled my mind as I wormed my way into the Penn One complex, called the Penn District — past the Los Tacos No. 1 and a new gelato space — looking for the new Roberta’s, the first standalone in Manhattan. Technically, its two-story structure, the latest in an unusual succession of projects from Carlo Mirarchi and Brandon Hoy, has no proper street address.

Wander until you find it, off a narrow courtyard between 33rd and 34th streets. Around a corner, a barrage of Roberta’s signage promises a tiki bar, rooftop dining, and pizza by the slice, perhaps aimed at the travelers and sports fans who wander this neighborhood like lost pilgrims. On the ground floor is what looks like an everyday neighborhood pizzeria, albeit one with a wood-burning oven. Bypass it and go up a winding stairway. Painted with a garish red monster, that stairway is reminiscent of the murals of Bushwick.

By contrast, the second floor looks like a sports bar from Blade Runner, with flashing neon signs and jumbled architecture beaming in from all sides. A dining room seems all windows, while an outdoor area with picnic tables is dominated by a bar lacking the promised tiki flourishes (though there are co*cktails with names like jungle bird and banana hammock).

Once you open the menu, the evolved sensibilities of Roberta’s restaurants, including outliers Blanca and Foul Witch, emerge like smoke from a pile of kindling. After a pair of meals here, I’m convinced that Roberta’s is one of the best Italian restaurants in town, despite the incongruous setting, with a collection of classics and challenging new dishes.

The pizza

Start with a pizza from a modest selection of four to six, with a list of nearly 20 add-ons: honey, guanciale, jalapeños, and red onions among them. Fans know to go for the simple margherita ($22), cut into six slices, puffy around the edges, with plain tomato sauce and good cheese, perfectly stippled with char. After 16 years, these guys know how to make a pizza, and I would match this against anything Una Pizza Napoletana turns out.

The remainder of the menu falls into five categories, playing with the usual succession of dishes back in Italy: antipasti, first, second, third, and dessert. Here are some highlights.

Bread with stracciatella and anchovies

Unsurprisingly, the bread service is one of the best things on the menu, though it seems expensive, starting at $19. The centerpiece is a steaming flatbread, inflated like a poori or a pita. Alongside comes a bowl of stracciatella sloshing with cream and shreds of cheese, drizzled with a trace of fruity olive oil. Dip the bread, careful not to burn your fingers on the steam. Spend an extra $8 to have anchovies draped across the top for a salty and fishy counterpoint and $4 more for some house-cultured butter. This could be your entire meal.

Tuna carpaccio

Tired of tuna carpaccio? Try this one ($26). Sliced in curls thicker than usual and served at room temperature, the pink fish arrives snowed with freshly grated horseradish and dotted with fresh cherries, a seemingly illogical flavor combination, yet somehow it works, with pungency and slight sweetness.

Heirloom tomato salad

There’s an heirloom tomato salad ($21) in that same starter section, with tomatoes that are superbly sweet. Yet it’s different in that the fruit has been charred on the edges, and tossed with crumbles of tart sorrel and woody walnuts — flavors that suggest the end of the summer and the coming of fall.

Pasta with braised veal and linguine with mussels

A pasta section is split between standards and experiments. Among the former is a pappardelle (or sometimes lumache) in a pale veal ragu ($29) dressed with celery leaves and Parmigiano Reggiano. It’s surprisingly subtle and lets the wonderful wide noodles shine. Among pastas there’s also a wild take on linguine with clam sauce ($29), in which mussels have been added to the littlenecks, and the white-wine sauce zapped with squid ink; looking into the black bowl as you eat it is a bit scary: Forge ahead, though.

Herb stuffed porchetta and the piri-piri chicken

Mains include a skate wing with capers, a minted lamb shoulder steak, and a rolled and herb-stuffed porchetta ($36) that tastes exactly like it came from a roadside truck in Tuscany, sporting a crackling skin and smokiness from the wood-burning oven. Did I mention that the roast is tumbled with golden cherry tomatoes? Consider them a side dish. A spice-rubbed piri-piri chicken (half $30, whole $56) served with Jimmy Nardello peppers in shades of red and green also benefits from the wood.

The wine list

Skip the co*cktails and go for the wacky wine list with by-the-glass offerings priced from $13 to $20, which seems partly formulated to answer the age-old question of which wine to drink with pizza. There’s the classic pizza wine, a fizzy and off-dry Lambrusco, as well as a Virginia wine called Family Meal that’s an oddball mix of Gruner and Merlot, served cold. There’s also a Slovenian orange wine called Black Lamb, which has just the right amount of acidity to buoy up the taste of tomatoes.

It’s nice to see that the newest Roberta’s is experimenting with both the food and wines in ways that mirror its collection of restaurants, yet somehow it still seems new. This location gives New Yorkers a reason to brave a neighborhood that — without tickets to the Knicks or Rangers — they might otherwise avoid.