This "Slice" is far from perfect.

I realize that I’ve been avoiding writing about pizza – the reasons for that are twofold. One, I totally burnt out on pizza during spring of this year, while living in a rather obscure corner of Brooklyn with limited delivery options. Two, I think that Slice (the website) does a fantastic job covering it. I’m going to do a review of the place that caused my pizza burnout soon (it’s fantastic, seriously). In the meantime, I’ll fill you in on last night, when my girlfriend and I ordered in from a new place, named in an unwieldy and immodest fashion “Slice: The Perfect Food.”

Far be it from me to argue with the categorization of a pizza slice as the perfect food, at least in a certain category of local fast-food specialty – it’s hard to imagine NYC without its pizza parlors, which are to this city what doner kebap joints are to Berlin, or burrito stands are to L.A. Most pizza available in the city at least toes the line of some kind of long-established and well-thought-out tradition, though – whether it’s Neapolitan, Sicilian, or Italian-American, variations on a theme are the name of the game.

“Slice: The Perfect Food” (hereinafter STPF) has none of those pretensions; its affectations are altogether more precious. Like its spiritual (if not gastronomical) predecessor, the California Pizza Kitchen, STPF throws the whole lot of tradition out the window in favor of the idea of pizza – a baked crust with sauce and the occasional cheese sighting, where seemingly any topping is fair game. As an additional affront to pizza traditionalists, STPF (located at 1413 2nd Av.) claims to concentrate on the organic and restricted-diet-enabling side of the ingredient spectrum – the cheeses available, for example, start out at a relatively straightforward organic mozzarella, but move along to the lactose-intolerant-friendly goat cheese, soy mozzarella, and rice mozzarella. There is a gluten-free crust available, too, which makes the availability of whole-wheat crust seem downright normal.

Needless to say, this kind of menu is likely to give fans of traditional pizza the heart attacks that the healthy ingredients were designed to prevent – that is, if the prices of the pies and slices ($4?!?) don’t cause a coronary first. Being the open-minded sort, though, I thought I’d give the place a try (full disclosure: it was also pouring rain out, and my girlfriend’s internet wasn’t working to check menupages).

We elected, from a book-like menu containing several more drawn half-naked women than pages of food choices, the rather irritatingly named (hint: the more money you shell out, the smarter you are) “expert” pie ($24), which promised grilled organic rosemary chicken and basil with marinara sauce on herb crust. We added the organic mozzarella at an indeterminate cost, braving the fact that the price of extra cheese wasn’t listed.

Thirty-five minutes or so later, the pie arrived, and the disappointment began. The crust was tough as nails, a fact not aided by the pizza having cooled substantially from its removal from the oven. While the cheese-and-sauced portions were fine, if bland, we frequently discarded bits of the outer rim of crust. Yes, the pie was good enough to finish, but if it had been any colder, we would have had to reheat it (it would have been tough in a standard-sized oven, too – the pies are rectangular).

You’d think the story would end there, but you’d be wrong. My girlfriend and I were picking at Ciao Bella Chocolate Sorbet and Pumpkin Gelato pints (the former, by the way, is still my favorite of the two, but the latter…it’s really, really good), when the doorbell rang. Having ignored his phone call earlier, she and I thought that it would be her best friend coming to collect something he’d forgotten. Instead, it was a second STPF delivery person bearing an “expert” pie with added cheese, an hour and ten minutes after our initial order.

Needless to say, she was as befuddled as we were, particularly when confronted with the evidence (read: box) that we had just consumed the pie we’d ordered. This pie even had the address written on the side – did we end up with someone else’s pie earlier, I thought? My girlfriend, always quick on her feet, offered the use of her telephone to the pie-bearer to call STPF and clear up the mystery. We’re not quite sure what the problem was, but after the call ended, the second pie was offered to us, gratis (other than my girlfriend tipping the delivery person – rarely has a tip been so well earned).

Anyway, “expert” #2 was leagues better than the first. Most importantly, it was hot out of the oven, making the crust significantly less tough, and the chicken/cheese/sauce combination more appealing – just a completely different experience. Frustratingly, we were too full of cold-ish pizza and gelato to really appreciate it. My girlfriend just reported, though, that even cold (refrigerated overnight and consumed for lunch), this pie was much better than our original from last night.

I can’t really complain about two pizzas for $30-ish, but I don’t think this experience was typical – if it is, STPF won’t be in business for much longer. I’m not sure if it will anyway – I suppose there are plenty of people in the UES who will happily pay $24 per 2-person pie, but are these people also finicky enough to order rice mozzarella and gluten-free crust, and forgiving enough to order again after a cold pie is delivered? Regardless of what I think of the place from a business standpoint, the inconsistent pies could also use some improvement, even within the constraints of the menu; hot delivery of every pie should also be a top priority. Perfection, to put it mildly, remains elusive.