main

Food & DrinkRestaurant reviews

Homeslice: holy shit it’s the best pizza in London – Restaurant Review

19 June, 2015 — by Toni Ratcliff0

I fucking love pizza.

It’s my special treat. Whenever my husband is away for the weekend you can pretty much guarantee that my Friday night will consist of a large takeaway pizza, a bottle of cheap white wine and a terrible Rom Com. Think The Other Woman starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Upton and the guy who plays Jami Lannister from Game Of Thrones. Dreadful shit.

Yup, I am what you might call a ‘classy broad’. But despite my terrible taste in cheap wine and movies, I think most people would agree with me that a good pizza can be one of the most pleasing things ever.

Therefore you can imagine my delight when I stumbled across the existence of Homeslice last week, a little joint serving massive pizzas with gourmet toppings in Seven Dials, Covent Garden.

Homeslice, Neal’s Yard

Apparently Homeslice started life as a food cart selling slices of pizza in the courtyard of an East London brewery. They now reside in a permanent abode down a quaint little alleyway in Neal’s Yard, where they knock out wood-fired pizza in their hand-built pizza oven. And all this in just a few years. Not bad, eh?

homeslice pizza london
They may have come from small beginnings, but damn their pizzas are HUGE! All of their pizza’s come in a set 20 inches, which for you stat fans, is the equivalent of half a metre x half a metre. That’s pretty darn big. And they are all priced at a set £20 each. Or you can get a BIG slice of one of their three basic pizzas for just £4.

In fact, there is a simplicity to the whole menu that I really liked: they only sell ten different pizzas that come in a maximum of two sizes, and they only serve one type of beer, one red wine, one white wine and one rosé, a few soft drinks and no sides.

homeslice pizza london menu
They’ve simplified the menu so there’s less faffing about ordering and more time for eating and drinking. Great stuff! I also love that fact that if you order wine it is served ‘by the magnum’. Ie: in fricking huge bottles that make you feel like a Hobbit. And then at the end of your meal your waitress will measure how much you have imbibed with a good old-fashioned wooden ruler, and you just pay for what you drink. Ingenious.

homeslice pizza london
When it comes to actually eating your pizza, the tables are very tiny considering the humongous size of the beasts. We had a table for two and initially this was a bit of a logistical nightmare when faced with a 20 inch pizza on a wooden board, a bottle of water with two glasses, a huge magnum of wine, with two more glasses, a metal tub of napkins and two paper plates. Plus being seated about two inches away from your neighbouring table(s) on a Friday night when everyone was a bit drunk and clumsy. It wasn’t easy. However, great pizza prevailed!

Homeslice Pizza: Goat shoulder and pulled BBQ brisket
What’s great is that you can have a 20 inch pizza which is 50/50 on two different toppings. So we plumped for the two meaty ones below that sounded the most exciting, and something a bit out of the way from your usual, boring toppings.

Pulled BBQ brisket with carrots, celery and pickles

The first thing I noticed was the really lovely base. It was soft and squishy and totally foldable. Which is lucky because you soon realise that once you have cut yourself a huge piece, the only physical way you can eat this behemoth is to fold it up on itself a bit like a New York slice. Usually I like to see what I am eating so this would offend me, but it was so dang tasty that I soon forgot and just chowed down. On first eating the brisket you notice an overwhelming sweet aniseed smell, like star anise. When you consider the way you would normally slow cook a hunk of brisket, it is with celery, carrots, some sugar and sweet flavourings, like star anise or All Spice, so it’s a very clever idea indeed. And it’s super yummy too. It had a great unique flavour, unlike any other pizza I have had, with little hints of chilli and salt. Really moreish. Really delicious.
homeslice pizza london

Goat shoulder with Savoy cabbage and sumac yoghurt

This is probably the most exotic pizza topping I have ever had, and I was not disappointed. The goat was soft and tender and spaced out in little chunks so that the fatty flavour was not over powering. The Savoy cabbage was a nice crunchy contrast to the soft pizza dough and goat. It was an interesting addition instead of lettuce or rocket that can tend to go a bit wilty when placed on top of a hot pizza. The little dollops of sumac yoghurt added a nice fresh flavour to cut through the grease, with the sumac adding some good lemony flavour here. I also feel like it had a garlic butter base, but was like eating the best garlic bread pizza ever. Good times!

homeslice pizza london

Courgette and artichoke

We just had a slice of this vegetarian one, you know, for research. Again this one had a garlic buttery base (base base base) and was topped with tons of courgettes, artichokes and parsley. It was super delicious even just with garlicky veggies. I think most meat eaters would be more than happy to wolf down 20 inches of this vegetarian pizza.

homeslice pizza london

Just to bang on a bit more about the actual pizza crust, I can’t express how much I was impressed with it; soft and squishy with a good wood-fire char on the bottom. I took some leftovers home and even two days later it was still soft! That’s a sign of a good pizza I think.

homeslice pizza london

So there we have it. Pizzas the size of a table. Wine bottles as big as my arm. Wood fired bases and gourmet toppings. The next time that my husband is out I reckon I know where I am going. I can always watch Dirty Dancing on my phone or something?

Still hungry? Find all the most delicious places to eat with our best London restaurants section, including this review of Beer and Buns Izakaya.

Date:
Title:
Homeslice, London
Rating:
51star1star1star1star1star

Leave a Reply