Food
No Pie in the Sky
A Manhattan parlor slices a healthier path for pizza
Merce_17@yahoo.com
Novice Pesto, Intermediate Arugula, Advanced Mushroom and Master Tofu: At a popular new restaurant on New York's Upper East Side, these are some of the stages of personal growth to a new dimension of healthy pizza. Slice: The Perfect Food sells an all-natural, organic piece of the pie that goes into the body without causing bloat and counters its oil-slathered counterparts with fresh ingredients.
The mind behind the slice is Miki Agrawal, a 27-year-old Cornell graduate who was raised on delicious Indian and Japanese food but loved pizza. Soon after college, she found out she was lactose intolerant--and saw an opportunity to make a change in how all of us eat. Slice opened in October and has already been featured on the Food Network show Recipe for Success. Agrawal is now opening a second location of Slice in Tribeca.
Pizza lovers have reason to be grateful. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has found that standard American version of the Italian classic is drastically unhealthy: Two greasy slices of Pizza Hut's Stuffed Crust Pepperoni Lover's pizza deliver more than 800 calories and a day's worth of saturated fat and sodium.
Slice's pizza, customers say, isn't any less tasty for being better for you. "The pizza here is superior," says Robert Groves, who's dining at Slice for the second night in a row. Tonight he eats a slice of "Skilled Eggplant," topped with saut'eed organic eggplant, sun-dried tomato pesto and soy mozzarella. Each slice is made to order--it hasn't been under a heat lamp for hours. Prices range from $3 to $5, depending on toppings, and each individual slice is cut into four mini slices.
"I do bite-size pieces to convey neat and clean," says Agrawal as we share a slice with pesto, goat cheese and caramelized onions. I try to break one of the triangles with my hands. "No--you just bite it!" she corrects me. "Tastes good, right?" she confirms.
Agrawal came to New York to play semiprofessional women's soccer, then worked in investment banking and film production. But she soon found herself caught up in entrepreneurial ambitions.
"I realized that working in banking made me just another cog in the wheel helping the man. I'm much more creative than that," she reminds herself. "I have never been able to work for someone." Describing herself as a classic "connector," Agrawal professes she learned nothing from her business minor at Cornell. "I did my own business school. I surrounded myself with the right people and made decisions."
From recruiting faithful investors to setting up tastings at local gyms, Agrawal has used karmic give and take to create a loyal network of partners who help support and promote her Slice vision. "She did an amazing job with this place," says frequent customer Andre Lizarazo, general manager of a nearby Crunch gym. He chomps on a "Beginner Hummus" slice with Kalamata olives and caramelized onions.
Agrawal is not the star chef behind the slices--that would be Tomas Zavala, formerly of Soho's the Cupping Room--but rather the master go-getter behind the scenes.
"I just have the ideas!" she says. She crafted Slice's atmosphere as carefully as its food, hiring cutting-edge interior and graphic artists to create a clean, Mac-generation pizza parlor.
JC McIlwaine, a manager at Slice, met Agrawal on a Sopranos film set where they were production assistants.
"Miki has this invisible magnetism to her," he says, pouring fresh olive oil in a jar in Slice's immaculate kitchen. "She has an energy that is strong. People are touched by it."
Photos by Meredith Napolitano
CAPTION: After discovering she couldn't eat cheese or drink milk, Miki Agrawal, a 27-year-old former banker and soccer pro, opened a healthy pizza shop that features pies with names like Skilled Eggplant, Advanced Mushroom and Master Tofu.
