Roma Pizzeria & Restaurant in Pottsville: Wood-Fire, a Cult Peppa Pig Slice, and a Grandpa Pie for the Ages

I walked in, ordered, paid the bill, and reviewed the pizza like every other customer. No heads-up. No comps.

Some pizzerias I’ve been meaning to get to for years. Roma Pizzeria & Restaurant at 116 West Market Street in Pottsville is one of those. After years and literally hundreds of local recommendations telling me I had to try it, I finally made the trip through Schuylkill County — and this one carried real expectations based on the sheer volume of people who kept telling me the same thing.

Roma has a very cool setup. Behind the counter you can see the wood-fired oven and two brick ovens working in concert — Roma’s own site says the round pies are baked in their all-organic Le Panyol wood-fired oven at 800°F, which is the real deal for a NEPA-adjacent slice counter. Walk in the door and you’re greeted immediately by a vast selection of gourmet slices on the counter. There’s so much appetizing pizza staring back at you that it gets a little intimidating to make selections while the line builds behind you.

I asked the pizza guy at the counter which pizza was most popular. He confidently pointed to the Peppa Pig — and I was glad he did, because that same pie kept coming up in reader recommendations, and one had just come out of the oven. From that starting point I ended up eating four slices across the counter: a NY-style cheese slice, the Peppa Pig, a Grandpa slice, and a Stuffed Buffalo Chicken pizza.

Here’s how the flight went — and there’s a really nice gut vs. technical story at the end.

The NY-Style Cheese Slice: Grande Mozz, High Upside, Slightly Rushed Reheat

I always test a pizzeria on the plain NY cheese slice before I move on to the gourmet stuff. It’s the benchmark.

The pizza guy at the counter confirmed what the setup already suggested: the round NY-style pies are baked in the wood-fired oven and reheated in the gas brick ovens for slice service. That’s a good workflow on paper. In practice, on my slice, the reheat felt rushed — the slice wasn’t as hot as it should have been coming to me.

The crust was lightly baked around the cornicione with a little leoparding on the bottom — a real tell that the original bake was at a high temp on that Le Panyol oven. Thin, well-stretched, quality bones. But because the reheat was quick, the crust ate a little soft for me instead of the crispier bottom I would have preferred.

Cheese-wise, I noticed Grande mozzarella boxes being used as storage throughout the pizzeria — a legitimate quality signal, because Grande is one of the top mozzarella brands NEPA pizzaiolos will consistently reach for when they want a premium melt and pull. Roma applied a very generous amount of that cheese to the slice, and the sauce was a little light underneath. For a cheese-lover — and let’s be honest, Schuylkill County loves a heavy cheese slice — this is exactly what people are ordering.

For my palate, I like the sauce to shine and the crust a little crisper. So the proportions read a bit off for me — but that’s a personal preference call, not a knock. The ingredients are quality. The oven is quality. The upside on this slice is high. With a slightly more thorough reheat, a touch less cheese, and a touch more of that sauce shining through, I would have loved this thing.

The Peppa Pig: Thoughtful Culinary Creation With a Cute Name

Now we get to the pizza everyone told me to try.

Roma’s own description of the Peppa Pig — which they treat as a locked recipe, no modifications please — is:

• Locally sourced pork belly from Northside Meats in Pottsville
• Peppadew peppers
• Artisan pepperoni (the cup-n-char)
• Special cheese blend
• A creamy sauce and a spicy sauce, together

Visually, when the counterman first suggested it, my brain went to the viral “swine” pepperoni-on-pepperoni-grease-aioli style you might have seen at spots like Tony Boloney’s. I assumed I was about to eat fun organized chaos.

What I actually ate was thoughtful culinary creation with a cute name.

Start with the crust: beautifully baked, light, crisp, and flavorful — the Le Panyol wood-fire doing exactly what a Le Panyol is built to do. The artisan cup-n-char pepperoni was applied generously — crispy, salty, with a little heat. The pork belly from Northside Meats was the star ingredient in the composition: soft, chewy, and a little sweet, providing this beautiful contrast to the salt and crisp of the cup-n-char.

Then the sauce architecture. There’s a white creamy sauce and a deep dark red spicy sauce working together on the same pie. Between the two, you’re tasting sweet notes, spicy notes, chipotle notes, creamy vibes, and even some sticky vibes all at once. There’s a lot going on, but the flavor and texture balances were unrivaled on this counter.

The fact that Roma won’t let you modify this pizza tells you everything about how they see it — this is a composed dish with a specific point of view, and every layer earns its place. Local pork belly from a local Pottsville butcher. Peppadew peppers doing the sweet-heat lifting. Cup-n-char pepperoni for salt and crunch. A dual-sauce move that most pizzerias wouldn’t dare attempt.

“Fun organized chaos” would have been an easy win. Instead they went for thoughtful culinary creation with a cute name — and they nailed it.

The Grandpa Slice: The Overall Favorite

This was my overall favorite slice of the flight.

The Grandpa is built on a classic grandma-style crust — a thin Sicilian with a slightly more dense crumb, that unmistakable pan-baked Long Island / New York grandma feel. Roma tops it with fresh whole-milk mozzarella, then finishes with a vibrant, fresh, succulent tomato sauce ladled on top of the cheese (as any proper grandma pie should be), and finally with cup-n-char pepperoni.

I asked about the naming convention, because I hadn’t heard the Grandpa distinction called out at other grandma-style shops. I learned the difference between a Grandma slice and a Grandpa slice at Roma isn’t a matter of XY chromosomes — it’s the addition of pepperoni. Adding pepperoni to a grandma pie makes it a Grandpa. I love that. It’s a small quirky detail that stays with you.

Everything about this slice sang. The crust was beautifully baked. The whole-milk mozzarella was fresh and clean. The sauce on top was bright and vibrant, showcasing the natural tomato instead of hiding behind sugar. The cup-n-char pepperoni delivered its salty, spicy, crispy edge in exactly the right proportion.

Freshness, natural flavors, and a beautifully baked crust made this the standout from a technical standpoint.

The Stuffed Buffalo Chicken: A Beast With Real Upside

The Stuffed Buffalo Chicken was a heavy beast of a pizza — a round double-crust stuffed pizza with a top and bottom layer of dough sealing in cheese, diced fried chicken tenders, and buffalo sauce, finished with a swirl of buffalo sauce on top of the golden-brown crust.

I wasn’t sure about the visual of the buffalo swirl on top at first — but after I tried it, I actually enjoyed that top-note of sauce.

Where this slice held back for me was on the interior execution. The fried chicken tenders inside were fried a little longer than I would have liked, and the cheese wasn’t melted all the way through — a reheat issue that a longer, more thorough turn in the brick oven would have fixed. I also wanted more buffalo sauce inside — I’m a classic Frank’s Red Hot and butter guy, and a stuffed buffalo chicken pie needs to lean into that flavor profile hard.

This one is sure to fill you up and it has real potential. If I ordered it again, I’d request a more thorough reheat and a side of sauce or ranch (Roma offered me both at the counter — I declined at the time and regretted it). An indulgent slice worth another swing with a couple of small tweaks.

Pizzaiolo’s Notes 🍕

• A Le Panyol wood-fired oven at 800°F is serious equipment — Roma’s round pies came out of that oven with the leopard-spotted bottom and lightly-blistered cornicione you’d expect from a stone-hearth Neapolitan-adjacent bake
• Grande mozzarella boxes visible throughout a pizzeria are a real quality tell — you don’t stock Grande if you’re not serious about cheese
• The Peppa Pig’s dual-sauce move — creamy white plus deep dark red — is technically ambitious and delivers a genuinely composed flavor arc rather than a novelty gimmick
• Northside Meats pork belly on the Peppa Pig is exactly the kind of hyper-local sourcing story I love finding — a Pottsville pizzeria buying local pork from a Pottsville butcher
• The grandma/grandpa naming convention (grandpa = grandma + pepperoni) is a fun quirk I hadn’t come across elsewhere and I’m going to be looking for it on other menus now
• The gourmet slice counter workflow is where Roma has room to grow. The original wood-fire bakes are excellent — the reheats on the two slices I found middling (NY Cheese and Stuffed Buffalo Chicken) were the specific factor holding those slices back

Final Thoughts

Roma Pizzeria & Restaurant deserves the volume of recommendations it’s been getting from Schuylkill County locals for years. The Grandpa slice is a technically excellent grandma-style pie with cup-n-char, and the Peppa Pig is a thoughtfully composed specialty that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. The NY Cheese and Stuffed Buffalo Chicken both had real upside — quality ingredients, quality oven, quality intent — that a slightly longer reheat would unlock.

If you’re anywhere near 116 West Market Street in Pottsville, walk in that door, get past the intimidating gourmet counter, and order the Grandpa slice and the Peppa Pig. That’s the flight.

What I’d Order Next Time

• The Grandpa slice — again, always, forever
• A whole Peppa Pig pie — I want to sit down with a full one
• The Stuffed Buffalo Chicken with a full reheat and a side of ranch — I’m giving this pie the second shot it deserves
• Whatever fresh gourmet slice just came out of the Le Panyol on my next visit — that’s how I found the Peppa Pig, and I’m sticking with the strategy

My Takeaways

• 🔥 All-organic Le Panyol wood-fired oven at 800°F doing beautiful work on the round pies
• 🧀 Grande mozzarella as the house cheese — a real quality signal for a slice counter
• 🐷 Peppa Pig built on locally sourced pork belly from Northside Meats in Pottsville, peppadew peppers, artisan cup-n-char pepperoni, a special cheese blend, and a dual creamy-and-spicy sauce architecture
• 🍅 Grandpa slice — grandma-style thin Sicilian crust, fresh whole-milk mozzarella, vibrant on-top tomato sauce, cup-n-char pepperoni
• ✏️ Grandma vs. Grandpa distinction: not chromosomes — pepperoni
• 🍕 Cup-n-char pepperoni doing standout work across multiple pies
• 🌶️ Stuffed Buffalo Chicken with a swirl of buffalo on top, real potential with a fuller reheat and side of sauce/ranch
• 🥄 NY Cheese with quality ingredients and a lot of upside — I’d love it with a longer reheat and a little more sauce shining through
• 📍 116 West Market Street, Pottsville — Schuylkill County pizza worth the drive

Have you tried the Peppa Pig at Roma? Are you Team Grandpa or Team Peppa Pig? Drop your call in the comments — I know the local Pottsville faithful have very strong opinions on this one.

Pizza is Similar to:

• Mifflin Pizza in Mifflinville
• Berwick Original Italian Pizza (Brooklyn Square and Buffet)
• Dino’s Italian Restaurant in Wilkes-Barre

Rating Table

A quick reminder on the two-tier methodology before the numbers: the writeup above is my gut read from the visit. The scorecard below is my technical scoring on the standard six-category rubric — locked in 24 hours later. Both are honest, and on this visit they told nearly the same story.

Gut Ranking (in the moment)

1. Grandpa Slice — my overall favorite, the technical standout, and the pie I’d order every time
2. Peppa Pig — the most memorable slice, the one I’ll be thinking about years from now
3. NY-Style Cheese Slice — quality ingredients, held back for me by a rushed reheat and cheese-heavy proportions
4. Stuffed Buffalo Chicken — indulgent beast with real potential, held back by interior execution

Technical Scorecard

Story behind the scores: the technical scorecard and my gut ranking landed in the same order this time, which is always a satisfying outcome. The Grandpa slice’s 8.4 Taste was the single highest category score of the flight — the freshness of the fresh whole-milk mozz, the vibrant on-top tomato sauce, and that cup-n-char pepperoni delivering exactly what a grandma pie should be. The Peppa Pig’s 8.1 Taste and 7.9 Crust are what earned it the #2 slot on a pizza that intentionally leans away from a traditional single sauce — I marked Sauce n/a since the creamy + spicy dual-sauce architecture doesn’t map cleanly to a single-sauce rubric score, and evaluating them together I felt the flavor and texture balances were unrivaled. The NY Cheese and Stuffed Buffalo Chicken both scored in the low 7s, and in both cases a more thorough reheat was the single biggest factor separating what I ate from what I know Roma can produce out of that Le Panyol. I stand by my gut ranking of what I enjoyed most in the moment, and I stand by the technical scores I locked in 24 hours later.

Roma Pizzeria & Restaurant
116 West Market Street, Pottsville, PA 17901
Schuylkill County
All-organic Le Panyol wood-fired oven (800°F) · Two brick ovens · Full-service pizzeria + Italian restaurant · Vast gourmet slice counter

Speaking of great sauces — the vibrant fresh tomato sauce on Roma’s Grandpa slice and the dual creamy-and-spicy sauce architecture on the Peppa Pig are two of the more distinctive pizza sauce statements I’ve eaten this year. See how they stack up against the rest of the NEPA region field in our full NEPA Pizza Review coverage. And if you’re building pizza at home, our Amazon affiliate picks are linked on the site — every click helps keep NEPA Pizza Review independent and ad-light.