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Roberta's
Roberta's opened in January 2008 in what was then a genuinely industrial, unglamorous stretch of East Williamsburg bordering Bushwick, well before that part of Brooklyn had become the dense restaurant destination it is today. The restaurant helped define what that transformation would even look like — a wood-fired pizzeria that doubled as a genuine cultural hub, running its own radio station out of the back of the building and growing produce for the kitchen in a rooftop garden. That combination of serious wood-fired pizza technique and a scrappy, DIY cultural identity became a genuine template that a wave of ambitious restaurants across Brooklyn and beyond would go on to borrow from — Roberta's wasn't just an early, good pizza restaurant in Bushwick, it was one of the places that helped establish what "ambitious restaurant in an unglamorous industrial neighborhood" was even supposed to look like in New York. The pizza itself sits closer to a New American interpretation of wood-fired than a strict Neapolitan tradition, built around seasonal, sometimes unexpected toppings pulled partly from that rooftop garden rather than a fixed, traditional menu — a kitchen willing to treat pizza as a genuine canvas rather than a format with rules to follow strictly. For a New York pizza list, Roberta's is the essential "the restaurant that helped build the neighborhood around it" entry — proof that a great pizzeria can also function as a genuine cultural anchor, radio station and rooftop garden included.
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Juliana's
Juliana's opened in December 2012 in DUMBO, Brooklyn, founded by Patsy Grimaldi, who came out of retirement at age 80 to open it — a genuinely unusual restaurant-industry comeback, in the exact building he'd previously run as the original Grimaldi's Pizzeria before selling that brand name and its franchise rights in 1998. Grimaldi named the new restaurant Juliana's after his mother, Maria "Juliana" Lancieri Grimaldi, a personal tribute built into the business's identity from day one. The opening itself was delayed by legal disputes with the Grimaldi's brand he'd sold years earlier, pushing what was originally planned as a March 2012 debut back to that December — a reminder that even a beloved, retired pizzaiolo returning to his own old kitchen wasn't a simple, uncomplicated homecoming. That legal tangle aside, Juliana's gave Grimaldi a chance to return to the same coal-fired oven and DUMBO storefront where he'd already built one legendary pizza reputation, effectively competing directly with the brand carrying his own former name a few doors down — a genuinely strange dynamic that's become part of the neighborhood's pizza lore, with regulars debating which of the two is actually closer to the "real" Grimaldi's pizza. For a New York pizza list, Juliana's is the essential "the founder's actual comeback" entry — an 80-year-old pizzaiolo returning to his own original kitchen to make the case, in person, that he never needed the name he'd sold to make the pizza that made it famous.
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