Breads Team Quietly Opened Rock Pizza Scissors in Early June

The partner behind Breads Bakery and the newly opened Nur, Gadi Peleg credits Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover for inspiration behind his new pizza restaurant, Rock Pizza Scissors in Times Square that opened earlier this month. It that came to him by way of a 2011 episode when Bourdain visits Gabrielle Bonci’s cultish Pizzarium: the tiny Roman pizzeria that has perfected the square slice.

Bonci, whose incredibly light pizza is cut with scissors and sold by weight, offers wildly creative toppings like zucchini flowers or with beets and potatoes (he’s about to open his first U.S. restaurant in Chicago next month). “I saw this crazy guy making all these wonderful pizzas and then cutting them with a big pair of scissors,” says Peleg.

And so, he got started on the idea for his new pizza shop he has opened in partnership with Urbanspace’s newest outdoor market, TSQ MKT.

“We want to make up for all those 99 cent slices that are horrible,” says Peleg. They’re especially prolific in tourist-laden Times Square.

Since opening, pizza toppings have included ricotta, spinach, tuna, and even egg in the pizzeria’s version of shakshuka. But Peleg’s favorite is a white pizza with colorful radishes. A slice starts at around $7 or $21 for a slab.

In a tiny former shipping container anchored by an oven made of rock stone (giving the pizzeria part of its name), the Rock Pizza Scissors team is making pizza from scratch starting daily at 8:00 a.m. using ingredients purchased weekly at the Union Square Greenmarket. It opens at 11 a.m. and often sells out.