Slice House by Tony Gemignani — Restaurant in Belmont

I’d been itching to try Slice House and finally made it to the Belmont spot. High hopes, given the name attached. However I’ve learned the hard way that when a “local pseudo celebrity” brand is stamped on the sign, you’re often paying for the name and the Instagram moment, not the product that made the name in the first place. I was genuinely hoping for a great slice. I grew up on the East Coast, so I know my way around a plain cheese, and I also know the standards out West can be different and the bar for “great” is often lower hence the never ending stream of five star reviews. There are West Coast places that can hang with the best in the U.S. or Europe. Unfortunately, this Place couldn't even hang with his own flagship store.

I always start with a plain cheese slice. Walking into Slice House in Belmont, the aroma is incredible, yeasty, toasty, tomatoey. But like I know from places near Italy or NYC, the places that smell the best don’t always land the flavor.

Appearance and build: Slices look unwieldy and thrown together. Huge crust on one side, barely any on the other. It feels like luck whether you get a normal slice or one with half the cheese and toppings because the edge ballooned to 3–4 inches and nobody corrected it before saucing and cheesing.

There’s a visual overkill of cornmeal. It gets everywhere: hands, mouth, plate. The ironic part is you can see the bottom of the pizza they use screens so you don't even need cornmeal. Semolina is a tool, not a weapon.

Full-bite impression: Underwhelming. I kept waiting for the flavor to show up. Dominant note is parmesan (never a good sign on a basic slice), followed by an acidic tomato burn, then sandy semolina. Saucing felt random—thick and chunky in spots, missing in others.

Tasting each part: Sauce: Sweet-salty-tangy, but it leaves your mouth acidic and burning for a while.

Cheese: Rich and fatty in a good way, but way too parmesan-forward and wildly uneven. Bare crust peeking through in some spots, then a half-inch mound elsewhere where it wasn’t spread.

Dough: The biggest letdown. I was looking for real yeasty, fermented character; instead it tasted flat and lifeless. Physically, they’ve hit the benchmarks, no flop, nice puff. But the flavor isn’t there. You don’t have good pizza without good crust. I’ve eaten in North Beach and the quality and flavor there are far superior to this Belmont outpost.

Operations: Even around 2 pm, the crew looked checked out. going through the motions and slapping pies together without much care. A bit of training and an expeditor with eyes on consistency would help a lot. Also high Praise to the counter guy for being friendly but you just got to know when to stop chatting so people can go eat.

Value: It’s pricey for what you get. One slice feels high, and three slices run you close to the cost of a whole pie at your favorite spot.

Bottom line: Amazing smell, average flavor but terrible quality control and consistency, sloppy assembly, and heavy-handed semolina. Most of this is fixable: pull back on the cornmeal, spread sauce and cheese evenly, tighten up dough flavor, and make the crusts uniform. Until then, I’d pass on the Belmont location—especially if you’ve had the real thing in...

EDIT: Gave this place another try, came in for a lunchtime slice, and ate it at the restaurant. SO much better! Taste and texture spot on. Based on that, we picked up a large New York pizza for dinner last week, and again really good. Slices are huge, so I'll ask if they can do a double cut next time. My recommendation if ordering slices is to eat them right away if you can. I struggled with the no customizations thing - I had never experienced that. I recently watched Chef's Table: Pizza on Netflix, and now see this policy in a new way. These pizza "recipes" are chef created dishes that happen to be pizza. There are still times when we want custom pizza creations, and we'll go elsewhere for those, but I now understand the policy. Maybe it's just me, but I don't get the hype for this place. We've now tried them twice. The first time we picked up an assortment of slices to try their different styles. They were fine but not great, and we assumed that this was because they were in the case and were reheated when we bought them. We went back tonight, and this time ordered a whole pie to avoid the reheat situation. We also ordered the cheesy garlic bread and meatballs. I was in the restaurant when my pizza came out of the oven. I was told that it would just be a few minutes for the rest of the order, and the pizza was boxed and set aside with other waiting pizzas. It took 10 minutes for the rest of the order, so by the time I was handed my food, the pizza was not longer hot. I said this to the person handing me our order and was told that the pizza was still hot. I opened the box, it was warm with no cheese pull at all. They offered to reheat the pizza. No thank you.

The cheesy garlic bread was just odd. The meatballs were tasty but I would recommend that you get the sauce on the side as it's very sweet. I imagine that the meatball sub is pretty good.

This is decent pizza, but it needs to be better than that at their price point. This restaurant has a "no customizations" policy, so you get what they sell, period. They're not the only good pizza in the area, so for me, I'll be moving on to another place. They're very busy, and they won't miss...

Hopefully you've heard who Tony G is by now. His pizzeria in SF is ranked as one of the world's top 50 pizza joints. It is such an honor to have a world renowned pizza chef in the Bay Area, let alone a slice shop in the Peninsula.

Slice House gets everything right and then some. At first glance, you might get a bit "shocked" by the price. Medium pizzas start from $25 and Large / Sepcialties start from $35. But once you taste a bite, everything is forgiven.

Even if you may have had a particular type (let's say Hawaiian), feel free to try it at Slice House. This is not the pizza you know. It has been reimagined by Tony G with the best ingredients, love and care for the dough, and simply has no substitute. The Detroit style pizzas are a pizza laid out on garlic bread with hearty marinara sauce on top of the cheese. Again, you'll seldom come across such a "dish".

We've been to Slice House now a few times and each and every time, we try something new. And not a single time have we been disappointed. Absolutely a must-try if you live in...