Roberta's Bee Sting Pizza Needs to be Decentralized for All

Roberta’s, the legendary Bushwick pie-slingers, have been lauded for their exceptionally chewy sourdough pizza crust, burger, pasta, cookies, sticky buns, and hella-wavy industrial sit-down space.

But when the history books are closed, Roberta’s will likely live into posterity by their inspired combination of honey, chili, soppressata and mozzarella on the ‘Bee Sting’ pizza. Arguably, this is as influential a pizza as any created in the current millennium.

Roberta’s has gone national via GoldBelly's venture capital-funded supply chain magic in addition to maintaining a Los Angeles location with a distinctly Californian menu (wagyu beef carpaccio, anyone?). Myself, I’ve eaten out with friends the last two weeks straight; I’m (almost) fully vaxxed up; skip the frozen pizza shipments and give me the in-person experience, for Pete’s sake!

Or, for a typical sleepy Saturday in my apartment, an UberEats delivery from Roberta’s Lower East Side kitchen will do just fine.

I ordered my Bee Sting with added mozzarella; although I love Neapolitan pizzas, I just can’t do with the typical tiny-squares of mozzarella floating on the pie. Give me dairy, or give me...um....just give me dairy.

The pizza arrived 20 minutes early — praise the Lord! — and as I opened the box, I just knew, “Oh yeah, here’s a review.” Because the Bee Sting is beautiful, really truly — look at the char on that crust, the curl of those fiery-red sopressata coins, the glistening honey pooled with grease.

Calling all NFT enthusiasts - anyone want to add some gnarly, GIF-y graphic art (I’m thinking dinosaurs and skeletons slow-dancing on the pie) to this picture, mint on OpenSea and snag us all a bundle? My LinkedIn is in the bottom-left, please submit your proposals accordingly.

Anyway, the Bee Sting is a legendary pie, as I’ve said, and this particular Bee Sting was as good as any I’ve had — sweet and spicy, with a funky kick from the sourdough, and plenty of cheese. Gotta have the cheese.

I give an 8.5 out of 10 to the Bee Sting. A tried-and-true classic, just as good (actually, even better) than the first time I tried at a Broadway Bites circa 2014.

Funny how stuff created in 2008 is now considered ‘classic;’ maybe our perception of time is just moving faster as all media goes meta and decentralized.

Ahem Topic for another post.

Until next time.