Austin, Texas – Home Slice Pizza

Restaurant: Home Slice Pizza
Cuisine: Pizza/American
Last visited: July 26, 2010
Location: Austin, Texas (South Congress – SoCo)
Address: 1415 South Congress Ave
Price Range: $10USD or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 5
Service: 4
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 4.5
Additional comments:

• Most popular pizza joint in Austin
• Homemade, hand tossed
• Arguably the best pizza in Austin, Texas
• East Coast (Chicago/Boston/New York) style pizza
• Known for authentic New York style pizza
• Specializes in simple well made thin crust pizzas
• Restaurant and take-out store front
• Long line ups/busy at peak hours
• Pizza by the slice, or whole pies available
• Offers huge salads and some subs
• Gourmet desserts available
• 2 new pizza flavours daily
• Local favourite
• Quick, casual, cheap
• On Food Network’s Diners, Drive Ins and Dives
• Free Rocket candies at cashier
• Wine and beer to go
• No delivery
• Open late (Fri-Sat until 3am)

**Recommendations: Sausage and garlic, White pizza

Inside “More Home Slice” (take-out store front)

Home Slice Pizza is located on the popular South Congress street in Austin, Texas so I passed by it numerous times. There’s always a line up outside this famous pizza joint, especially during peak hours. I would usually never put pizza on my “must try” list, especially if I’m traveling in the South, mainly because  pizza isn’t what Texas is known for. But thank goodness I’m a sucker for a place with a line-up of locals.

Home Slice Pizza is arguably the best pizza place in Austin, Texas. I’ve never tried any other pizza places in Austin, but talking to the locals I can tell it’s definitely an Austin favourite. I was ecstatic to also learn that it was featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive Ins and Dives – now it’s really something not to be missed! (For me at least) Home Slice Pizza isn’t the traditional Italian pizza, but it’s authentic New York style East Coast pizza. It’s pizza or ‘pie’ that you would find in New York, Chicago or even Boston.

Home Slice Pizza has two store fronts, one is larger and it’s the dine in restaurant-style and the other is right next door called More Home Slice and that’s the small take-out/eat in joint.

The 3 kinds of pizza always on the menu is cheese, pepperoni and margherita. Each day they offer 2 new pizzas, but it will be the same 2 pizzas for that particular day of the week. For example, I came on Tuesday and every Tuesday will be Sausage and Garlic and White Pie with Broccoli pizzas.

Sausage and garlic is apparently the most popular pizza, but the White Pie is also recommended.

I can’t compare it to pizza offered in the East Coast since I haven’t been, but I was talking to people actually from the East Coast and they say it’s the real deal.

I was also surprised to see that they serve homemade desserts like Canoli, cheesecake and Tiramisu, and it looked great! Big portions!

On the table:

**White Pie with Broccoli – 5/6

• $3.25
• It’s a pretty huge slice of pizza and to be honest I didn’t think it looked that appetizing. It looked really basic, plain and flavourless so my expectations sank quite a bit. To my surprise, it was actually very flavourful!
• The crust is home made and hand tossed and they bake the pizzas in a stainless steel oven.

• The broccoli is fresh and tender and not dry at all.
• They go very easy on all the toppings and sauce for all the pizzas here, but everything is fresh and well flavoured so they’re not heavy pizzas.
• The “White Pie” pizza has no tomato sauce. The base is actually an olive oil base and was quite fruity and not greasy or too oily.
• They used three kinds of cheese for this pizza.  I think it was Parmesan and the white round slices are fluffy pillows of creamy mild ricotta cheese. I’m not sure what the third cheese was. The cheese they used are strong so they didn’t need much of it for the cheesy salty flavour to come through.

• There’s not much leoparding on the crust, but it’s probably because they’re not using a traditional firewood oven. It’s not an Italian style pizza though so I don’t expect to see leoparding.

• The crust is very thin and crispy and it tastes like flat bread. The entire crust is actually crispy so the pizza isn’t soggy and there’s not much flexibility in it at all.
• It was almost like Focaccia with all the herbs, but baked ultra thin. I loved how crunchy it was and it wasn’t too crunchy where you’re chewing it forever either.
• Overall it is a very good pizza and I can see how they’ve kept a loyal clientele.
• The pick up window is also open until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights so it’s a great place for late night munchies.

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