The purpose of this blog is for me to talk about all the yummy and great things in New York (I still need to post about this past weekend’s adventure to the Hester Street Fair, Chinatown and Brooklyn). It’s not really about restaurant reviews, but in this case, I think something needs to be said. On Sunday, a few friends and I went to Slice, “The Perfect Food” (as per their website) in the West Village before seeing the full version of Metropolis at Film Forum. One of my friends that was coming to the movie had been there before and recommended it (especially since she’s vegan and the place has a bunch of vegan options).
Now, I can’t compare our experience to the one on the Upper East Side, but needless to say, I won’t be back again.
Their “About Us”: We are inventors of the perfect food. We invented the perfect food via rational and scientific methods. There is nothing mystical or incredible about us.
This whole spiel was written on their wall at the restaurant, plus more. “Perfect” is definitely not the way to describe this food. At all. And “nothing mystical or incredible about us” is more along the lines of fact.
We all sit down and figure out what we want. We decide to order a bottle of wine. One of my friends asked if the wine was from Long Island. The waitress said she didn’t know. Now, looking on the website, I see that all their wines are from places in upstate New York. Mmkay. She brings over the bottle and 4 glasses. As soon as she put them down, she ran away. We didn’t even get to try it beforehand to make sure the bottle was fine.
We order a starter of hummus and then I proceed to order the Miki pizza (Honey whole wheat crust, basil pesto, free-range crumbled chicken sausage, goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil). She tells me that they’re out of pesto. Curious, since it’s a pizza place and they have to put basil on my slice anyways. So, fine. I went with the sundried tomato pesto instead.
The hummus comes out with some whole wheat pizza crust. It’s supposed to have some olives. They gave us about a 1/2 a teaspoon of chopped olives. And no napkins or forks, knives…even plates.
Our food comes out. My pizza is all sundried tomato pesto, hardly any chicken sausage and goat cheese, but PLENTY of basil on it (and no basil pesto). My friend Seth ordered the Bomb (Honey whole wheat crust, spicy free-range chicken tikka masala, part-skim organic mozzarella). I think there was more chicken on this pizza than pizza. Plus, it just tasted spicy and bland, not even like tikka masala (which I LOVE). Jena, who is a vegan, ordered the Skilled Eggplant (Herb crust, sundried tomato pesto, part-skim organic mozzarella cheese, sauteed eggplant, kalamata olives) but with vegan cheese. Everyone thought her sauce (and mine since it was the same) tasted sour, like there was a bad tomato mixed in. The cheese was hardly melted too. We also only got napkins and nothing else while others around us got plates, silverware and napkins. The waitress didn’t even come over to see how we were all doing. Granted, she was the only one, but I had to take her away from cleaning a cup at the bar in order to get our check.
We give credit cards and she gives us this huge sharpie marker to sign the papers with. Apparently, they lost all their pens. Mmkay guys, I’m sure you could’ve run to the many Duane Reades around the area and gotten some.
Maybe it was a really off day for them, but still, bad all around. Luckily the movie we went to canceled the bad of the dinner (seriously, silent films are the best and Metropolis, the full version, is even better).
Granted, I can’t condemn their program to help schools that can’t afford pizza parties for their children. Albeit “healthy” pizza parties. That’s a redeeming quality.
Anyways, just had to vent. It’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of experience anywhere. And that’s saying something.
I YUM New York 