Slice & Pie showcases the personality of flamboyant Italian-born pizza impresario, Giulio Adriani. The Slice & Pie logo even features a drawing of Adriani wearing his trademark John Lennon specs. Giulio’s pics are plastered all over Slice & Pie’s zany pink, black, and white website. Giulio seems to like Giulio very much.
If it’s not already obvious, Adriani isn’t subtle, nor is his pizzeria. The Slice & Pie outpost at Union Market occupies a small footprint, but has three different signs1, one of which is neon. Neither Slice & Pie nor Adriani is likely to get lost in the crowd.
Perhaps Adriani’s healthy ego is warranted. He opened the first Slice & Pie on 14th St. in 2022 and has since opened two more, with a fourth Walter Reed location “coming soon.”2 Furthermore, Slice & Pie pizza won a couple of accolades, including a #2 ranking in 50 Top Pizza Slice USA 2025 and a #98 ranking in 50 Top Pizza World 2024.3 DishingPizza is duly honored to sample the second-best pizza slice in the USA — who needs Brooklyn or New Haven with Slice & Pie in the DMV? Leave it to Adriani to parley his pizzeria’s award into a spot on the local news.
Surprisingly, Adriani’s self-promotion left him some time to perfect and diversify his craft. Slice & Pie offers New York, Detroit, and Sicilian styles. Even the New York-style pizza is diversified; the cheese pizza feels restrained – thin, sparse, and tasty, but the Mushroom & Truffle slice is rich, with a garlicky truffle oil and thick cheese layer. The Detroit-style looks outrageously rich, with cup and char pepperoni, glistening with hot honey.
The Slice & Pie cheese slice has a firm, chewy crust, a flavorful, fresh tomato sauce, and terrific, sparingly applied mozzarella. It’s always a pleasure when a cheese slice isn’t layered with an asphalt-like pavement of mozzarella, so the tomato sauce shares the stage. The Slice & Pie cheese slice evokes the superior Andy’s Pizza.4
The mushroom & truffle slice is also quite good, with the same crust, but with a heavier, oilier white-pizza vibe. Are these the second-best slices in the United States? Absolutely not. They aren’t even the second-best slices in the DMV, much less the entire country.
Slice & Pie’s tagline is A pizza joint. It speaks volumes that Slice & Pie, with its carefully cultivated hipster vibe, even has a tagline. Authentic pizza joints in New Jersey strip malls don’t bother to self-identify or self-promote. Slice & Pie is trying hard. Nits aside, Slice & Pie makes a solid pizza that’s worth the trip, but don’t buy into the hype.
Slice & Pie
Union Market – 1309 5th St NE, Washington, DC 20002
14th Street – 2221 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009
H Street – 1750 H St NW, Washington, DC 20006
Walter Reed (Coming Soon) – 1155 Dahlia St., Washington, DC 20012
Type: New York, Detroit, Sicilian
Pizza quality: 🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐
Slice: $4
Slice price per sq inch = $0.13
Slice greed factor: 🤑
Pie price (18″ round): $23
Pie price per sq inch = $0.09
- Where Boogy & Peel suffers from a lack of signage, Slice & Pie has an overabundance. ↩︎
- The Walter Reed location was slated to open in 2025. No word from Slice & Pie if or when this location will actually open. ↩︎
- The Slice & Pie website provides many links on its Awards and Recognition page, but everything points back to the two 50 Top Pizza rankings from 2024 and 2025. If this seems misleading, complain to the pizza ranking fairness board, also conveniently domiciled at the 50 Top Pizza organization. ↩︎
- Andy’s Pizza also serves its slices atop a sheet of red and white checkerboard grease-resistant paper — a whimsical nod to old-school red sauce restaurants. ↩︎