8. Homeslice w/ Clemmie
A meal featuring lakeside pubs, dissection of friendships and year 8 maths ➗
📍 Homeslice near Mansion House, EC4R 1EE
📆 6:30pm, Wednesday 2nd April
Hello everybody. Guest number eight has been enormously patient with me, as this was the third attempt at dinner after double rearranges on my end. First time it clashed with a theatre trip, and for the second the world was making me feel anxious to the point of nausea, so I tactically backed out.
Thankfully, it’s a universal truth that third time’s the charm.
This is edition number eight of the London Pizza Pal newsletter - enjoy! 🍕
THE VENUE
My limited research of Homeslice is that they either do pizza by the slice, or enormous 20 inch plates where you can go half and half.
My stomach, to its own detriment, is categorically known to appraise food on quantity first. Court-ordered recounts on the actual quality of this food is then only explored if necessary at a later date.
Therefore, the giant Homeslice pizzas appeared to be right up my street. Let’s see if they lived up to my (evidently misguided and flawed) expectations.
THE PIZZA
PRICE - 2 / 5
Comparison here is difficult. It’s a 20 inch pizza that costs £28. I had to stop myself falling into the trap that half of that would represent a normal sized pizza and cost £14 - which would represent terrible value - because it doesn’t.
If we consult our good old friend Mr. Maths, the 20 inch pizza has an area of 100π whereas a standard 12 inch would be 36π - so the 20 inch is almost 3x bigger.
By ordering on such a large scale I think that means you’re actually saving a lot of money vis-a-vis other pizzerias.
But, because no one should have to do that amount of maths to eat a pizza, I’m going to give it a two. On principle.
APPEARANCE - 2.5 / 5
My guest and I made one fatal error - not noticing that the ‘Nduja half had no tomato. Looking back at the photo it does look like it we ordered half pizza, half fancy garlic bread.
Based on my historically vibe led system, this does mean the rating suffers.The sheer size of it on the table, though, is impressive and resultantly reclaims some status and points.
SERVICE - 3.5 / 5
Our server (singular, not like last time’s nightmare) was very smiley and chatted to us a little bit. The best one so far, and that’s while respectfully recognising that she didn’t even do anything particularly amazing. 3.5 feels fair.
TASTE - 3.5 / 5
Honestly, I was surprised - the pizza tasted much better than I anticipated when it was presented to us. On the Margherita side, there was a richness to the sauce that you wouldn’t expect from looking at the photo.
And what can I say? The ‘Nduja half slapped. Like, really really banged. Thoroughly recommend, but its credentials as a ‘pizza’ should rightly be questioned, hence the sub-four score.
AMBIENCE - 2.5 / 5
It was a bit corporate-y for my liking, an overly polished establishment in the middle of the City.
But, it did mean there was plenty of space, a nice big pizza oven and despite there being a rowdy table of gilet-wearing, finance-adjacent bros next to us, it was never overly loud.
All in all, Homeslice doesn’t crack the top six on the leaderboard, but I would still recommend it. Just be prepared to not have a clue how much food you’ve actually eaten.
THE GUEST
Name: Clemmie
Job: TV Researcher
Last pre-pizza rendezvous: Two weeks ago
This is Clemmie!
Clemmie joined my school as part of the sixth form girls’ intake. By spending a lot of time doing various shows and through knowing the same people, we’re both equal parts of the wider 20-strong friend group that persists 11 years later.
It’s also not our first pizza date - we went to Pizza Express together in Putney nine years ago after I asked her out. I won’t say how it went, but let’s just say we never went on another date.
Clemmie’s a trained journalist, meaning she’s very skilled at asking direct questions. Her personality means she’s very skilled at asking uncomfortable questions, too.
As someone that struggles to unburden myself from the anxiety shackles that imprison my mind, I have in the past found Clemmie’s openness of opinion admirable, disarming and scary, all at the same time.
In classic fashion, nervous that Clemmie would constantly reference our bygone date, meaning that I was forced to write about it, I bungled saying hello when she arrived at Homeslice and instead led by banning her from talking about it. And because of that, I’m writing about it anyway. Great.
The reality was that, of course, we barely spoke about the date anyway. And thankfully, Clemmie is far too good a conversationalist to let minor Andrew-isms derail an evening.
We talked instead about the minefield that is negotiating salary, whiskey bars in Peckham and the sharing our insights of the inner workings of the sub-friend groups within our larger one. The latter is actually a very eye opening game to play. It was all done with curiosity above all else, and if you’re part of any big friend group I suggest you periodically check your understandings with someone else because the individual close friendships you recognise, as we discovered, aren’t as obvious as you think they are to others.
Our shared interests? Among others, the Lake District, being the indefatigable champions of organised fun for our friends, and refusing to play games unless people take them seriously - because no one has fun unless everyone tries their best and abides by the rules.
No surprise then that both of our shared memories of one another are from meticulously planned events.
Mine of Clemmie’s is from a rooftop football pitch on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Battersea. Fresh in my new job, and really wanting to hammer home the idea that football isn’t the preserve of dudes that get off on kicking lumps out of each other, I corralled a group of 20 with varied athletic experiences and interests onto pitch with one simple aim: to show the doubtful how fun the sport can be for all ability levels.
Clemmie was characteristically undoubting in her enthusiasm. So, to engineer healthy competition, I put her on a team with fewer veteran footballers. My assumption was that her general team sporting prowess (netball, hockey, lacrosse, tennis, you name it) would serve her team well. Credit where it’s due, to me, I couldn’t have been more right.
Clemmie won the golden boot in the competition for being the top scorer, but more importantly her confidence to get stuck in without fear of judgement encouraged the other novices to get on the pitch.
It was an amazing day for lots of reasons, but for me Clemmie was the person bold enough that inspired the rest of the group - my read was that she made others feel like the space was for them, that nothing needed to be earned. All that mattered was giving it a go - what an enviable outlook to have.
Clemmie’s memory of me was on my own shortlist. On our group’s sojourn to the Lake District last May, Clemmie planned a pub crawl ‘Ou est le poulet?’ in the nearby village of Ambleside - a race to find a nested pair by visiting the various pubs they might be hiding in.
Our search party consisted of Clemmie, our friend Danny and myself - not a triumvirate who had perhaps ever spent any time together just as a three. Plus, given our track record of competition, concerns were vocally expressed that we’d be that one team that took ‘winning’ too seriously.
All the more surprising, then, that the three of us had such a good time chatting that we basically forgot we were even playing a game. While the group chat pinged with messages of false findings and general chicken shenanigans, we chatted sincerely about our aspirations, the changing phases of our lives and the reassuring peculiarities of what it is like to remain friends across an entire decade.
I’m glad Clemmie picked this as her memory - it’s a reminder that the people you’re around all the time, in unexpected situations and configurations, can still provide the most touching and affirming moments of friendship.
We later found out too that the people we’d been seeking were in the first pub we visited, but cheated and left via a back door - we categorically couldn’t have won. Thank GOD neither Clemmie or I, with our fixation for fairness, rules and winning, cared. Not one bit.
I also was keen to road test another conversation avenue for this project, and knew Clemmie would be a willing participant.
Centred on finding ways to learn new things about my long-term friends, I suggested Clemmie ask me any question of her choice. As silly or serious as she wanted, all she needed to do was ask something she wanted to know about me - and I would answer as truthfully as I could.
After some thought, she posed the question “What do you most like about yourself?” I won’t repeat my answer here, but I will say that as a format point I really liked it. I’ll be encouraging my future guests to ask their own questions in the same vein.
If there’s enough interest, maybe I’ll even share that part of the conversation here too. As always, please do leave any feedback or reflections you have about what you’d like to read in the comments!
That’s about enough for this time I think - not least because my hayfever is killing me and I can’t really see anymore?
Thanks so much again to Clemmie for her patience in waiting for me to sort out my diary! I hope you too have enjoyed reading about it - stay safe, take your Cetirizine and / or other antihistamines (responsibly, always read the label), and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Bye! 🍕
Want to be a guest and join me for dinner? Book your slot using this calendar: https://cal.com/andrew-cowburn/pizza
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