Opening Line at Homeslice and (Re)Meeting An Owner

You'd think they were giving away free pizza in there!

Greg and Marlo, who have been on this blog numerous times, flew to Austin yesterday for a whirlwind training trip.  We somehow arranged a lunch trip to Homeslice.  I had previously agreed to participate in a study at the UT psych department where I would get paid to drink (for science!) beginning at 4pm (email me if you wanna participate, it’s fun).  I had to stop eating by noon though, and since Greg and Marlo’s training started at 1, we had to be at Homeslice when they opened at 11:30 to fit our schedules.

I’ve been to Homeslice when they were closing, both the main restaurant and the slices window.  I had never seen them open though.  I was shocked.  Look at the line!  To open!  On a Wednesday!  This place is craaaazy popular.  Does any other place in town have this kind of line to open on a normal weekday?  The line was even longer than the 2:15am line of drunks who pile out of cabs to see if they can stand long enough to make it to the slice window.

We hoped to get our order in quickly so it would not get waylaid behind everyone else’s order.  We did a pretty good job, ours came relatively fast.  We talked weddings (since they’ve already had one) and anchovies.  Marlo had never tried anchovies, and she’s always eager to try new foods when she comes here.  Last visit she ate her first falafel.  She thought the anchovies were alright, but thought that they were a little too salty, and probably wouldn’t get them again.

As we were wrapping up, one of the owners came by.  Cue racing blood pressure.  This is one of the women I rob multiple times a week!  Now we’re meeting face to face.  Uh oh!

I said it was really nice to meet her, and she replied that we’d already met at the last year’s contest.  Whoops!  She was really nice, and just came by to ask if I happened to be competing in the next hands on an eggplant sub (HOES!) contest.  I told her (hell) yeah, I plan on competing, as does Erin.  I put in the request for rule clarification that I previously asked of Nano and Shauna, and thanked her for the graciousness of the prize.  Greg nicely chimed in that he only heard about Homeslice through me, and has now come in quite a few times.  He neglected to mention that he lives in Dallas and has yet to pay for pizza (although in his defense, he’s bought beer, salads and even hats).  As she was about to walk away, I asked, without directly apologizing per se, if I was hurting their bottom line too much.  She said they’re happy to provide the prize, and are just glad I’m taking advantage of it.  It would be a lot worse, she said, if they offered free pizza and the winner didn’t make use of the bounty.  Well, let no one accuse me of not making use of my free pizza deal!