Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Slice, the perfect food: "A terrifying glimpse into our dystopian future."


Slice: the perfect food is one of the creepiest places I've ever been. Their logo seems to be an inverted Tri-Force. Never has a symbol of such incredible good been flipped over and used for something so evil since the Catholic Church turned the Upsidedown Cross logo on its head! This place is not just selling "pizza," (in fact, they're not selling pizza at all, but more on that soon), they are selling a lifestyle of smug superiority. This is the culinary equivalent of that piano guy on NPR who used to sing songs that sounded like the beginning of Frasier and were essentially about how working class people are stupid.


Let me just quote this text for you in case you can't read it in the photo:
Slice is a wonderful invention. It is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It is the perfect food. The perfect food is much better than the perfect painting because you can eat the perfect food, and it tastes good. The perfect painting never tastes good. The perfect painting tastes like canvas and oil, which tastes horrible. 
 The perfect food is also much healthier than the perfect painting. The perfect food is natural and organic while the perfect painting is toxic. If you eat the perfect food you will come away feeling giddy, and jubilant. If you eat the perfect painting, you will come away feeling poisoned.
Slice, the perfect food is something like a pizza. If you look at it, it appears to be a pizza. As you eat it, it sits on your tongue much as a pizza would sit. But in fact, the perfect food is vastly superior to pizza, so enjoy.
It's really like they did a focus group based on everything that I hate and invented this place just to irritate me. We ordered one plain slice, which was charmingly called "the Simpleton" on the menu, at 2:21:26, according to our receipt. 27 minutes and 52 seconds later, after a lengthy conversation about that weird propaganda they had stenciled on their wall, a game of yahtzee and a game of chess, we were handed this thing:


For now let's briefly overlook the fact that it took them almost half an hour to defrost a supermarket pizza, cut it into a triangle, and throw a sloppy handful of parsley on it. Instead let's revisit some of their rhetoric before we even begin to discuss this shitshow they are calling food. The entire tone of is so whimsical and self-satisfied I want to find whoever was responsible for writing that copy and shake him down for his bus tokens. This is some seriously sanctimonious bullshit! These people must be, in the words of my amazing friend Meredith Gaydosh, so fucking delighted with themselves. And it is sickening. I am getting so mad thinking about this shit, just do me a favor and go back and read it all over again in "come to Butthead" voice.

Now let's talk about the fact that this is "vastly superior" to pizza. Apparently, in whatever fantasyland the copy writers for Slice, the perfect food live, "vastly superior" means smaller, more expensive, and less delicious. It also means that there is no longer any crust but there is an enormous, sloppy pile of parsley. As we were eating this... thing, Eric looked contemplative and said, "I think this is what the normal characters in A Clockwork Orange eat." Laszlo looked at both of us really excited and was all, "I was just thinking that this is what the pizza is like in Logan's Run!"

Rating:


Slice, the perfect food - $3.82
535 Hudson St (Perry & Charles)
New York, NY 10014

7 comments:

  1. Slice, the perfect food, is people!

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  2. colin! killed 'em with this one.

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  3. "It's really like they did a focus group based on everything that I hate and invented this place just to irritate me."

    http://www1.american.edu/ted/images4/food016_1479202107_374274.gif

    -Brian

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  4. I hear after delousing, they make the new hires all stand around in a group and chant that mantra 9 times before they can even touch the food that is "Slice"

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  5. It seems like everyone is writing copy like this now. ... uh. I have to admit, I get groupon e-mails... and they are all written in that kind of "humorous way"

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