Battle of the Vegan Slices: Viva Herbal Pizzeria v. Slice, the Perfect Food

Rebecca Marx

Slice's Radha pizza.

Although Manhattan doesn't really suffer from a dearth of slice joints, the options it presents for the carb-craving vegans in our midst are a bit lacking. True, making pizza vegan is as easy as leaving off the cheese, but plain marinara sauce and a scattering of desiccated broccoli aren't really the stuff that satiety is made of. And by the same token, melting a wad of Daiya cheese over tomato sauce doesn't seem quite right, either. Seeing as how everyone else is privy to a wealth of pizza toppings, it seems only fair that vegans should be afforded the same creativity, especially given that pizza is one of the planet's most versatile foods.

Second Avenue's Viva Herbal Pizzeria sounds like a hair product or medical marijuana dispensary, but its variety of dairy-free pies has made it something of a vegan pizza mecca. Across town on Hudson Street, Slice, the Perfect Food, also has both an awkward name and numerous vegan options. And so we embarked on this week's Battle of the Vegan Slices.

Our first stop was Slice, which bills itself as "a magical world where pizza is good for you." To that end, it offers organic ingredients, gluten-free crusts, and "artisan flatbreads" that promise to "evolve the current pizza eating experience." Many of their pizzas can be customized to be vegan, but we chose one that was already defiantly dairy-free: the Radha, which comes bearing hummus, black olives, basil, sun-dried and regular tomatoes, diced purple onions, and "bruschetta topping." A very generous slice costs $6.50.

Although putting hummus on a pizza is to most pizza fanatics as desirable as putting dog food on a pizza, Slice actually manages to carry it off, mainly because everything else on top of the hummus is flavorful and fresh enough to, if not negate it, then definitely lessen its weirdness. The olives and basil work particularly well, and if you concentrate on those, it's almost possible to ignore the pizza's real problem, which is the crust. As you start at the tip of slice and move outward, you travel the entire spectrum from chewy to punishing to injurious. In a magical world, pizza may indeed be good for you, but it also doesn't make your gums bleed.