HomeSlyce,
1741 Light St., Federal Hill
What
constitutes a pizza? Let's venture into that swirling vortex of
reflexivity and neurotic hand-wringing and arbitrary
boundary-setting. Pizza can be on a bagel, while it cannot be on a
Ritz ™ cracker. It can be inside a pita, but it cannot be inside a
soft pretzel. How do we know these things? How do we sort our chaotic
sensory impressions of the world into categories like “pizza” and
“not-pizza” with relative consistency? Are these categories
natural or constructed?
If
you are game for this wild trip into the heart of the nature of
reality, you should check out the new pizza place in Fed Hill.
HomeSlyce is like a trendy hip contemporary pizza bar thing that is
just slightly off the mark of being trendy and hip, which makes it
quite tolerable as a place to hang out. They have a pool table. The
interior is painted yellow and black, like a big friendly bumblebee
clumsily ricocheting off your face. HomeSlyce offers a number of
attractive specials that could make it worth your while if you are feeling ambivalent about trying something new: Mondays are “half
price slyces,” which means that Pizza Club dined at a 50% discount
after we reminded our server that it was “half price slyce” night
and he recalculated our check.
So
at HomeSlyce they make these things called “slyces.” Not pizzas,
not calzones – a slyce is like a hybrid of the two, with folded-up
edges and an open trough in the middle. Every time I write slyce with
a “y” it makes me feel sad, so let's make it a proper noun and
call them Slyces. A Slyce is like a pizza boat or canoe or kayak.
This is a new thing under the sun (except that it comes from
their parent restaurant, Cazbar, which serves Turkish pides which are
basically the same thing, but with tasty Turkish food inside).
 |
| Margarita |
The
Slyce, in general, has a lot of crustal surface area that is not
within biting range of a topping: at each end is a knot of crust
where the Slyce is sealed off, high-and-dry above any cheese or
sauce. Even along the sides, the ratio of crust to topping skews
towards the folded-over crust; if you are a crust-leaver-behinder,
there will be a lot to leave behind. Of course, chain pizza joints
solve the crust-leaving-behind problem by throwing in those cups of
melted butter-flavored substance for you to dip the pizza ends in. We
recommend a similar tactic for HomeSlyce: given the known
crust/topping asymmetry, provide dipping sauce or something. We
requested sauce and they gave us some marinara, but the situation
demands a more inspired dipping option.
 |
| Probably chicken-pesto |
The
reason that I insist so vocally on the need for better dipping
resources is a positive one: HomeSlyce crust was quite good, even
when it was far from any topping, making us want to eat more. It was
light and chewy, with browned edges and just enough crunch. So we
were highly motivated to finish it.
Thanks
to the Monday half-price special, we were able to sample most of the
Slyces on the menu. A Slyce could feed two or three people, or one
really hungry person – HomeSlyce also offers traditional pizzas in
10” and 16” sizes, which Pizza Club will evaluate at a later
date.
 |
| HomeSlyce Classic - our #1 selection |
The
Margarita Slyce was a standard mozzarella-sauce-basil affair –
those stuck with the end pieces observed that the crust was
underdone, with some doughy areas where it got folded in on itself. A
“Port the Bella” (?) Slyce comes with garlic sauce, mozzarella,
roasted red peppers, spinach, portabella mushrooms and feta cheese.
Some Pizza Club members wanted more oil on this pie, and felt that
the mushrooms were not particularly fresh. A Chicken-Pesto Slyce,
with “pesto sauce,” mozz, chicken breast, sun-dried tomatoes,
peppers, onions, olives, and feta, was underwhelming. The sauce did
not taste like pesto. The “Pop-Pie,” with garlic sauce, onions, spinach,
and goat and gorgonzola cheeses was a favorite with some club members
for its intense garlicky punch and good flavor balance.
 |
| Crusty remnants |
The
hands-down favorite, however, was the HomeSlyce classic, decked out
with goat cheese, walnuts, eggplant, spinach, caramelized onions,
roasted peppers and “HomeSlyce sauce.” We got two of them and
they were the first to vanish. We theorized that, because of its lineage
as a Cazbar-affiliated project, HomeSlyce might have particularly
strong eggplant chops, and we recommend getting their pies with
eggplant.
 |
| Solution to crustal excess |
This
is definitely a new venue – the staff seemed a bit addled and the
first thing our waitress did was spill water down Jen's back (for
which she apologized profusely). In a way, this pizza is “fancy but
not” - an everyman pizza in a fancy package. The different pies
that we sampled all tasted somewhat similar – at least, the
experience of eating them was similar, with the abundant crust
overwhelming the other elements and the different sauces not very
differentiated. As mentioned above, there is a psychological element
to the Slyce experience in which one's bedrock assumptions about
pizza are challenged, so perhaps the concept overshadowed the
execution. We liked what we ate, but upon analysis it seems to be
your typical upscale bar pizza – you would eat it if you were there
anyway for a drink, but it wouldn't merit a special trip after the
novelty of the first encounter wore off.
 |
| Pizza Club rejoiceth |
It
should also be noted that Dan attempted to order a plain cheese Slyce
as a baseline indicator. This order was lost, caught in some ethereal
twilight dimension of Federal Hill, rediscovered, and became the last
pie to come out of the kitchen. Dan loved this pizza at first bite.
It was described as “very gooey, messy,” and also possibly the
best Slyce of the evening. This seal of approval suggests that
HomeSlyce has its basics figured out. They just have to rise to the
challenge of making this new pizza concept into a satisfying reality.
5.5/8
