Relish: Late Night Pie mediocre

By Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson     11/11/10 6:00pm

There comes a point in everyone's college career when they really, really need some pizza at 2 a.m. After a long night of teaching each other how to dougie, Dan and Siggy decided to reward their hard work with a visit to Late Nite Pie in midtown. Late Nite Pie is a rather hip place, so they gathered up their hipster friend (appropriately named) Austin and headed out to get some fairly standard pizza in a pretty neat venue.After driving onto a gravel parking lot that's likely to take out one's muffler, one is immediately attracted to the extensive artwork that covers the outside of Late Nite Pie. The entrance features a large, light blue Ren and Stimpy-like happy face, sure to make anyone in the 18-30-year-old demographic simultaneously nostalgic and creeped out. The art doesn't stop when you enter the place, either: We sat at a table underneath a picture of five scary-looking alien things. The best thing about Late Nite Pie is its local, underground vibe, and the artwork definitely compliments that. The place has three areas, divided in order of brightness: light, dark and outside dark. The dark room has a defunct pinball machine, along with a stage for their weekly live music. We were going to look up when exactly they have bands over, but their website doesn't work.

As for the clientele: Have you ever heard of Manchester Orchestra? Some dude at the bar definitely has, and he is way more legit than you'll ever be. "You just take some shrimp, and some lobster, and some tartar sauce, and put it in the blender, and there you go!" We're not sure where you go, but another dude definitely made the above statement, so somebody does. The wait staff and bartenders are incredibly friendly despite having way more tattoos than any good suburban mom would be comfortable with.

Beer! They have beer. We didn't order any though; Siegfried is currently trying to resolve his issues with Student Judicial Affairs, Dan has cirrhosis and Austin was watching his figure to make sure he could fit into his skinny jeans. Instead of beer, we started the night off with a Frito pie. The pie was about what you'd expect from a Frito pie, except it was served cold.

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After scanning through their pizza options, which includes pizzas with such names as "The Stanky Whore," we decided to order "The Boss Man." For all other specialty pizzas, the menu shows a picture of the pizza that you order. However, The Boss Man's picture in the menu was a picture of some dude, who was presumably the boss man and definitely not a pizza. "The Boss Man" comes with artichoke hearts, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. None of these toppings particularly stood out, and the crust was soft and unremarkable. The pizza was rather inexpensive, and considering they deliver until 3 a.m., it's a pretty good place for a college student to get some pizza.

If you're Rick Perry and enjoy eating babies, you should definitely come here on Sunday from 6-9 p.m., because kids eat free! Baby-eating (and straight-ticket voting) aside, Late Nite Pie has an excellent atmosphere, but their food isn't particularly exciting or interesting. It's worth a visit, but we'd be hesitant to recommend it for anything other than people-watching and feeling like a Houston scenester.

Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson are Wiess College seniors.

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