Pizza has been around for a long time, and now Slices opens up with its fresh taste and drive-through services.
Photo by Ed Gloor
Slices is the brand new Pizza shop that opened on Hampden and Poplar by Qdoba, supporting drive-thru service and delicious pizza at a great price.
Pizza is a particularly favorite food of mine, and it dates back to the beginnings of mankind. The first evidence of a pizza has been historically dated to the Neolithic age, although it was not the pizza that we know now; it was simply leavened bread that had other ingredients on it to add more taste.
Before the 18th century, the leavened bread had white cheese on it, and was generally made by the poor people across the Mediterranean Sea coast and Middle East.
After the 18th century, Italy began to put tomato sauce and cheese on its flat bread, and the pizza was officially born in Naples. America first saw the pizza when Italian immigrants came to this country in the 19th century. Pizza was sold as it was in Naples, with a vendor roaming the streets with inexpensive pizzas on his head, selling them to the poor in Manhattan. The first pizzeria is believed to have been opened in the 1920’s, in Little Italy, Manhattan, New York. Now pizza shops and ovens are open to the public almost everywhere across the United States, with there being an estimated over 60,000 pizza parlors across the country.
Slices is just one of those many pizza shops that are open to the public. The pizza company opened up in the Denver Metro area in late 2010. It brings a brand new idea to pizza, and that is the drive through. This is the first pizza shop in Denver to have a drive through service, where customers treat it like a fast-food restaurant or café.
The interior of the shop is very homey. There are some immediate circular tables placed in front of a large HD TV screen, which usually has ESPN running. On the right side there are multiple booths and tables, with another TV playing. It is usually very quiet, with only the sounds of people’s voices and amiable ambient sounds of employees making pizza with the delicious circular dough.
The pizza at Slices is made fresh and there are a plethora of ready-made options from which to choose. On any given day there can be sausage, Hawaiian, pepperoni, mushroom, and cheese all behind the glass counter on large pizza trays. If there is a special request on the kind of pizza, one must simply ask, and in about 5-10 minutes, voila, a fresh pizza is prepared.
The oven is in the back of the store behind a large wall, and completely out of view. I find this quite nice, because it suggests a mysterious wonder as to how the pizza is made; it also makes the shop look cleaner. There are many drinks to choose from as well, with a multitude of pop, ginger ale, and lemonade. There are also water bottles, vitamin water, sobe life water, and bottled root beer, all of which are visible and in a cooled fridge. After paying a student-friendly price of around five dollars for two slices and a drink, I looked into another cooler, which has frozen pizza slices priced at one dollar each. This is quite the deal, and one day I will take up this offer.
The pizza is delicious; it has just the right amount of sauce, cheese, and garlic spread upon the warm dough. Unlike the Denver Pizza Company – which uses a lot of garlic on their pizza – Slices uses the right amount. On some days it can be a little dry, depending on how long the pizza has been sitting on the tray, but that does not bother me too much, because it fills my stomach and keeps my wallet full, as well. And that is just a perfect combination for any restaurant to have.
