Slice & Pie

Dough, heat, timing

The dough work comes first for Giulio Adriani, chef at Slice & Pie in Washington DC, where the bench is organized around flour handling, oven control, and repetition. His line runs through AVPN training, then through New York rooms where Naples-trained habits had to survive service: A Slice of Naples until 2015, Espoleta from 2014, shaping and stretching under pressure until the gesture stayed clear. At Slice & Pie, opened in 2022, Adriani keeps that grammar in a small U Street shop built less for lingering than for turning out slices and whole pies with a crisp underside. The role is wider now, pizzaiolo, pizza consultant, and owner across Slice & Pie and Lucy, but the center has not moved far from dough management and fire. His signatures hold both registers. Montanara and Margherita sit close to the older vocabulary; DANTE’S KISS, WHEN PIGS FLY, and THE MONA LIZZA bring a more authored naming sense without leaving pizza’s structure behind.

A slice shop with Neapolitan habits

The program moves between whole pies, by-the-slice service, New York-style rounds, and Detroit squares, a wider American frame handled by a maker trained in Neapolitan rules. The menu gives the method room to travel: California tomato sauce on classic pies, white garlic base under Federalist Pig smoked brisket, cup and char pepperoni on Detroit Pepperoni, and fresh burrata set over mozzarella, basil, parmesan, and olive oil. Adriani has described the exchange plainly: “We bring here the ingredients and the knowledge from Italy, but then we open our hearts to the American style.” Gluten-free orders receive separate prep, new gloves, and assigned hands, with the restaurant treating each one as if celiac risk were present. The house’s acclaim sits in the same practical register. Slice & Pie was rated #2 pizza in America by an Italian organization in July 2025, but the bench-side evidence is the undercarriage: thin, crisp, and timed against the oven rather than against ceremony.

Two tables and the pass

The room is small, with only two tables and a few bar stools, and the work has the pace of a counter more than a dining room. Boxes move. Slices leave the deck hot. Whole pies cross the pass for takeout and delivery while the window stools hold the few guests who stay close enough to watch the cut. There is little separation between the room and the method, which suits the place: dough stretched, toppings set, heat applied, pizza finished, repeated. The noise stays conversational because the format is direct. Slice & Pie does not ask the room to carry the craft. It lets the bench do that.

The next dough to follow

Adriani’s expansion plans have named Union Market and The Parks at Walter Reed as future locations, which will test whether the same dough discipline can travel across more stations without blurring the style. For now, the clearest measure remains the U Street counter and the slice that leaves it, especially WHEN PIGS FLY.