Mike L.
Yelp
Let's try this again.
Hipsters, stop, before you flag my review again, try to actually READ.
The best thing about Homeslice is the service, they are super nice people. I've ordered here twice now and waited for my pie, they've always offered drinks while I wait and were courteous and quick.
But I'm not here to review the service, I'm here to talk about their pizza.
Here are the tenants of good NY Style Pizza:
1. Crispy yet chewy crust, crust that when you hold the slice out it doesn't flop.
"NY Style" pizza isn't just "thin crust", making a pizza large and thin doesn't make it "NY Style". The crust here does not get crispy enough because they, like most places in Toledo, use a conveyer belt oven to cook their pizza. I still don't understand why Toledo loves those conveyor belt ovens. We're cooking pizzas here not pop tarts. Does it really need to pop out of the other end automatically for you? NYC has more bad pizza than good pizza, but when it's good it's REALLY good. Homeslice is the kind of place that could blend in out in Austoria Queens or something but that's about it.
2. In NYC, the sauce is more heavily seasoned than you'd typically find in other variations of pizza. Flavorful and tangy, yet not laid on super thick.
The sauce might be the best thing about Homeslice.
3. If you want to know if a NY pizza shop has good pizza, try a slice of cheese first.
All you need to do to test a NY pizza is order a single slice of cheese. The holy trinity of pizza is: Crust, Sauce and Cheese. You've minimized the variables to 3 and can isolate the weak link. Again, with Homeslice it's the crust and quite honestly the crust is the most important part of NY Style pizza imo.
After trying Homeslice the first time and seeing my review getting flagged for no reason other than honesty, I figured I'd try it again, maybe I missed something?
So, I bought the $10 for $20 Yelp deal and thought, hey for a $10 investment how bad can this be? Well, worse than the first time.
The overall problem with Homeslice is that the crust is too thin and not crisp enough and the toppings are so incredibly light that by the time you get the pie home it could pretty much float away. Due to the cooking temperature and aggressively thinness this pizza is decent for about the first 5 minutes and then it just gets cold and floppy.
I think Homeslice gets good reviews because the local Toledo hipsters are DYING to make Downtown seem cool. I get it.
If Home Slice just bought a couple simple Blodgett ovens and tweaked their crust a bit (it doesn't need to be aggressively thin) I think they could create a solid spot. But hey, the hipsters seem to love it so I'll just "OK Boomer" myself.