For such a small space, Roma Pizza manages to contain a big personality. Set back from Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port, in a tiny, green-painted room, there is barely enough room for the four small round tables for dining-in. There’s almost not enough room for the large, brick bar containing at least eight pizzas, each pie split into two flavors for a possible selection of 16 flavors of pizza at any given time of the day or night. And there’s certainly barely enough room to contain owner Luca Pizzuti, whose booming voice warmly greets each customer as they enter, and says goodbye as they leave.

After 25 years in the food industry, this is Pizzuti’s second restaurant in Maine, following the success of the original Roma Pizza in Old Orchard Beach. “They like us in Old Orchard,” he explains loudly over the sound of the Italian television station playing in the background, “over there it’s all big greasy plain slices, while we have 32 different pies, we have sausage, we have broccoli.” And he’s right. While Roma Pizza always has fresh mozzarella slices available, Pizzuti’s specialty pies are as bright and inventive as any other pizza in town, including potato and rosemary pizza, the inevitable buffalo chicken pie, and even a fresh pear and bleu cheese pizza. These aren’t your typical beach slices.

“Other places, they use store-bought dough, or they freeze their dough. The ice crystals form, the ice melts, the dough is never the same. My dough, I make fresh, and I make right,” Pizzuti explains. Another customer asks if he has ever tried the pizza down the street, and Luca shakes his head. “Only my own,” he replies, the implication being that when you feel you’ve perfected something, that’s what you eat, and you don’t bother with what other people are doing.

We began, as our readers know we always do, with a plain cheese slice. It’s the litmus test for the kind of pizza a restaurant is producing, the slice by which everything to come can be judged; if a pizza place can’t produce a proper cheese slice, all of the mango and summer squash in the world isn’t going to fix it. We ordered at the counter, and the owner delivered the reheated slices to our table. It was a nice touch, and Roma Pizza’s plain slice is, in a word, outstanding. The crust is paper-thin in the middle, with crispy blackening from the bottom of the oven on the underside, which tapers up to a fat roll of dough around the outside edge that manages to be both crusty and chewy at the same time, with plenty of snap and big airy pockets spread throughout. The tomato sauce is extremely fresh and light, pleasantly raw-tasting (if a tad heavy on the oregano), with just the right amount of acidity remaining in the chunks of tomato hiding under a refreshingly light-handed application of salty, blistered mozzarella. Each double-sized slice is a meal unto itself, but emboldened by the strength of this first simple piece, we press on to Roma Pizza’s more exotic offerings.

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