JUMBO SLICE

You can get a large pizza nearly everywhere (except for places that have become sticklers for Neapolitan pizza regulations that decree fourteen inches, max), but if you want a jumbo slice, you must go to Washington, D.C. In this city, jumbo slice is not a synonym for large slice. It is much bigger than that, cut from a pie that is a full three feet in diameter, so outsized that two paper dinner plates are required to hold it and its surfeit of oil-weeping cheese and tangy sauce. To our knowledge, nobody defends the jumbo slice as an epicurean triumph, and as far as we can tell, few people ever have eaten one sober. The jumbo slice preferably is consumed during or at the conclusion of a night on the town. Its two leading purveyors, Jumbo Slice and Pizza Mart, stay open until just before dawn.