[Photographs: Christine Tsai]

The area around Bleecker Street between Sixth and Seventh is already so crowded with pizzerias (some excellent) that it doesn't seem like a new one would add much to the neighborhood. But Pizza Roma, the first American outpost of a Barcelona-based chain, serves something quite different: thin-crusted Roman square slices. Choose from the 6 to 8 kinds on display on the counter and a slice will be snipped (yes, with scissors) off the slab before it's reheated.

While we didn't love the Margherita (too cheesy) or any of the tomato-sauced pies (a little too sweet), the Four Cheese ($5) was quite tasty, and showcased a pretty novel quartet of cheeses: Fontina, blue cheese, mozzarella, and Taleggio are tangy and salty and, with the help of olive oil, fuse into the crust in a really appealing way. That crust is impressively light and airy for a square slice, with real hole structure; nothing dense or doughy about it, it's texturally closer to a slim focaccia. ("Our dough rises for 96 hours. This makes our pizza lighter, healthier and very digestible," the website says. Take that explanation or leave it.)

Five dollars is a lot for a slice, but you get a slab about 10 by 4 inches — maybe enough to fill you up where a smaller slice wouldn't. Overall? Not the best pizza on the block, but a few solid slices.

Pizza Roma

259 Bleecker Street, New York NY 10014 (map)
212-924-1970; pizza-roma.it