Home Slice Pizza and the Dangerous Food Movement

I would drive to Home Slice Pizza in Austin traffic.

In the rain.

Or hail.

On a bicycle.

Carrying a live chicken.

It’s that good.

You must go there. Order the number 6 – sausage, ricotta and roasted red peppers. Get the big one.

No matter how much you have, you will want more. So it makes sense to have some for later. And it's great cold, by the way.

It’s the kind of dish that in most restaurants, you would hope that someone had specially crafted such a combination, but you know better. Mostly, such things are just put together for menu appeal, with mediocre ingredients and an okay-ness, a passable-ness to them.

Not this time.

The tomato sauce on this pie is perfectly crafted to pack a big tomato flavor. Remember what your grandmother’s tomatoes tasted like? They’ve condensed that taste into a perfect, chunky pizza sauce.

The blobs of ricotta – who knew ricotta could have so much flavor? – hold the sauce on. The roasted red peppers are on top, soft but not too soft.

And the crust. This is not your typical thin crust. The crust is chewy, in a pleasant way, and there is no hard, inedible layer on the bottom, like what I usually get when I order in pizza. The pies come sliced big, so you have to pick up the slices and fold them to eat them.

Do not use a fork. And know that you will get something on you. Some warm, gooey, wondrous ingredient is coming for your shirt. Just relax. Food that requires protective barriers can be good.

When I finished eating one slice of this sacred food, I truly felt that I could love anyone. I thought back on all my enemies, one by one, all the people who have wronged me, and I could not imagine a single one walking through the door and me not loving them.

High on pizza endorphins, my husband and I languidly strolled through SoCo. We were nice to strangers. Dogs looked amazingly cute, every single one. Even drunk college students were quaint and entertaining to us in such an altered state of universal compassion with all humankind.

I was reminded of Liz Gilbert’s transcendent pizza experience in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. She even talks about how some people in Italy are blasé about politics – partly because the politicos are so out of control, partly because the food is so wonderful.

After eating Home Slice’s pizza, I can see how this could happen. We could call it the Dangerous Food Movement. You go in, you partake of food composed with such precision, such love, it is designed to make you feel good.

And you don’t just feel good in the moment, you feel good later, too. We’re not talking a bag of flavor-coated chips here, or something that distracts you from your misery. We’re talking food that actually changes your misery, that elevates it into something else. That lasts. We’re talking food that gets you to pick up the phone and call your best friend, who you haven’t talked to since last month when she forgot to pick you up and you had to ride your bike in the rain with the chicken.

But the Dangerous Food Movement just starts with one bite. You feel so good that you eat this kind of food again later that week. Maybe you try the #7 - white clams, garlic, pecorino romano. That second time, it only takes a couple of bites before you finally start to forgive your sister for moving away. Then it's the special slice of the day with spinach and garlic. Before long, you find yourself eating healing food all the time.

Soon, you’re not complaining at all. You greet people with genuine warmth, look them in the eye, and ask them about their mother, really wanting to know.

You try the #1 Margherita. The mild terror that used to be inside of you dissipates, a little each day, until it’s gone.

You start to actually care about things outside of yourself. You go through your day noticing all the wonderful things, like how your co-worker just wants to laugh a little, or how your boss’s eyes shine when he talks about learning to become a pilot. You go for the #5, the classic, pepperoni and mushrooms.

Suddenly, you’re taking actions to help people, instead of just complaining or theorizing about the people who need help.

Maybe, you’re even ready to help yourself or let yourself go for that big dream. The #2 takes you there - eggplant parmesan on a pizza. After you’ve been eating this way a while, maybe you even love yourself enough to let yourself fail at something…. And try again.

Certainly, I do see how this kind of food could make you forget about some things, and focus on others.

To paraphrase the Sufi poet Rumi:
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a pizza.
I'll meet you there.