When I visited Slice & Pint, a new restaurant that took the location on the corner of North Decatur and Oxford roads from Everybody’s Pizza, I did not get a slice nor a pint. However, when I arrived at around 8 p.m. on Aug. 16, I spent only a minute over the menu before a waitress named Nica Clark approached our table.
Nica listed that night’s specials and Slice & Pint’s dough that was “unlike any other.” Nica also joked that for now the restaurant was just “slice” and that “the pint” is coming soon. The restaurant’s alcohol policy at the time was BYOB, or “bring your own beer.”
“We applied for our liquor license about two weeks ago, so it should be any day now,” Nica said in an interview later that evening. By the time the Southerner went to print, Slice & Pint received its liquor license and began selling beer and other alcoholic drinks to any customer over 21.
Melanie Rabb, a mother of both Inman and Grady students, who runs the Corner Tavern with her husband, sympathized with Slice & Pint’s extended wait for the license. The Rabb’s have gone through the process of obtaining a liquor license in Atlanta five different times.
“The process always changes a bit and it just takes time,” Rabb said. “It always makes that home stretch at the end stressful, but you forget about it once you open and get busy.”
Curious about the new restaurant, Rabb and her husband visited on Aug. 3. She ordered a prosciutto and peaches pizza; he had a pizza with freshly made mozzarella and sausage. They greatly enjoyed the food and felt very pleased with their waiter. Melanie also said she would recommend the restaurant to others.
When I visited Slice & Pint, I shared a seasonal veggie covered in oven-roasted tomatoes, eggplant and summer squash. This pizza, one of Slice & Pint’s specialties, cost $13.50 and is available only to order as a full 12-inch pizza. Any future customers are welcome to create their own slice, but a speciality pizaa must be bought in full.
For desert, I shared a slice of the most recommended desert, a s’mores pizza priced at $3.50. The “campfire” pizza, as it’s called on the menu, is covered with roasted marshmallows, melted chocolate chunks and graham crackers crumbles.
Slice & Pint, like its predecessor, is divided into four different sections: the patio, the downstairs, the “upstairs” seating and the bar. The upstairs seating includes some of the benches from the property’s Everybody’s years, but the floors and other tables have been refurbished for Slice & Pint’s new style.
The restaurant theme has an earthy and local vibe, yet can also be used as a sport’s bar with televisions in various corners and a micro-brewery in the works next door.
On the day that I visited, and every other day the restaurant ran business without their liquor license, it was obvious the lack of a liquor license had taken its toll. At 8 p.m. on a Friday night, the restaurant seemed surprisingly empty. Most tables outside were full; inside, customers were sparse.
Nica attributed the short serving of customers was due to Slice & Pint’s inability to sell alcohol.
“A lot of people, once they learn we don’t have a liquor license, go elsewhere for dinner,” she said on the night that I visited. But even before Slice & Pint could sell alcohol, when people did stay for dinner, Nica did not get complaints.
Two weeks after my slice-less adventure, page 14 slowly moved through The Southerner’s editing process. It was close to 9 o’clock that night on Thursday, Aug. 28 when a fellow member of the Southerner staff asked me when the license was actually coming. Unaware of whether Slice & Pint ever did their liquor license, I checked Slice & Pint’s Facebook page and found picture after status after comment about how the restaurant’s liquor license had just come in and they were pouring their first beer earlier that evening. Although now my story is not as full of satire as I had hoped, I am genuinely happy Slice & Pint will be able to live up to its name’s full potential.
