Authored By Sean Phipps

This week, the NOOGAtoday staff ordered a newsroom favorite: hot, steamy pizza (and bread knots) from Home Slice Pizza at 2000 E. 23rd St. It's been a few weeks since I've written a Date Night Dining column. I've been traveling (a late honeymoon to Maine) and I needed something simple and easy to write about this week given the holiday. It didn't take too much convincing to get my co-workers to agree on a lunchtime pizza party. Yay! Of course, "party" actually means that we eat pizza and remain at our desks working, but I'm sure your office calls a similar scenario a "party" too. We both know it's not really a party because clothes remain on and bawdy jokes are frowned upon. It's really just "having pizza." None of this matters. Home Slice Pizza has been on my radar for a while now. The casual pizza/sandwich/wing restaurant features your choice of 20 plus toppings on a pizza and offers carryout and delivery to the area. Our offices are on Sixth Street and they had zero issues with delivering our pizzas piping hot in a reasonable amount of time. This article will be about those pies we received (delicious) and the bread knots (also delicious). If you do go to the brick and mortar, they recently expanded and now have seating for more than 60 people. Check out the interior below: https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FHomeSlicePizzaTN%2Fposts%2F464016120714303&width=500 The Pizza Ordering pizza for an entire office can be difficult. There seems to be a tipping point at about 5 people when asking for input on toppings is no longer practical. The person on your team with the pickiest eating habits will ultimately win out against the more adventurous eaters in the office. As NOOGAtoday editor Adam Green said, "you end up with the most basic pizza based on the pickiest eater." That usually results in the necessity for a two-pizza party with one being cheese and the other pepperoni. Rare is the office that agrees on a ham, pineapple, jalapeño and mushroom pizza. We ended up ordering The Pepperoni Party with 3x the pepperoni of an original pepperoni pizza. I guessed there were "thousands" of pepperonis on the pizza but everyone agreed that was an absurd overestimate. But you can tell by the photo below that this pizza is, indeed, a pepperoni party. We got a second pizza with cheese, Italian sausage and green peppers. The latter was a bit of a wildcard that worked out well. All of the specialty pizzas offer quirky local names. My favorite nods are The River City Rocket (pepperoni, double Italian sausage — meaning quantity, not double its Italian-ness— and jalepenos infused with wild wing sauce and garlic flavor) and Good Ole Rocky Top (bbq sauce, a proprietary cheese sauce, grilled chicken, diced tomatoes, bacon and mild cheddar). If you're feeling a sub sandwich, you can try one of five varieties including a Pizza Sub or a Buffalo Chicken Philly. As a wing nut, I cannot wait to try the lemon pepper and "Maui Wowie" wing sauces. We also ordered some garlic bread knots with a homemade marinara. Why not, right? Thoughts Pizza delivery is a luxury. To have food this good delivered to your office is something my great grandfather never had the pleasure of enjoying. If you're willing to pay just a few dollars more —$16 to $19 per pie — you'll notice a definite uptick in quality and flavor from the national chains. Home Slice pizzas taste homemade and even though it's a pizza you can really taste the love as ridiculous as that sounds. The Pepperoni Pizza Party offers pepperoni in every bite. That's a good thing if you like pepperoni. The small pieces of meat were slightly crispy, which I love on a pizza. Likewise, the cheese and Italian sausage were a great combo on the other pie. In my mind, I thought green peppers would go well with the sausage and it worked out. I found the crust of both pizzas to be perfectly in that "hand-tossed" region of doughs. It wasn't too thick nor was it crispy thin. Think of what an ideal middle ground would be for a pizza crust and Home Slice delivers. I ate three garlic bread knots and did KNOT regret it. However, I do regret the previous sentence. Chloé reheated a pepperoni slice a few minutes ago and commented that it warms well the next day. Some pizzas don't. Try to reheat a Little Caesar's "Hot and Ready" and tell me you liked it. You won't. Would we go back? I wish we could've piled up in a car and visited Home Slice as a group, but sometimes it doesn't work out like that. I suppose that's why delivery options and working pizza parties became a thing. If our pizzas were this good after being in a car for 20-minutes, I can't imagine how good they'd be right out of the oven. The NOOGAtoday team endorses Home Slice and we encourage you to consider them for your next pizza party. Have you tried Home Slice? What do you think? Let us know in the comments. The opinions expressed in this column belong solely to the author, not Nooga.com or its employees.