Dimond Slice Pizza: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Dimond Slice Pizza in Oakland’s Dimond District serves only vegetarian pizza, and the kitchen makes a vegan version of nearly everything. You won’t find a meat topping anywhere in the building. That makes this an easy room for a mixed group. Nobody reads a menu twice.

The format is simple, and the menu is short. The kitchen builds one Pizza of the Day and one Vegan Pizza of the Day, and the toppings change daily. A recent week ran from roma tomatoes with fresh corn, mozzarella, basil, and parmesan on Tuesday to broccoli with chile pasilla and white cheddar on Wednesday. Thursday brought mushrooms with sun-dried tomato pesto and feta. On Saturday the pie was roasted Yukon Gold potatoes and red garnet yams with caramelized onions and gruyere. Check the home page for the week’s lineup. The board decides what you eat.

You can order by the slice, the half, or the whole pie. The Pizza of the Day runs $4.25 a slice, $13.40 for a half, and $25 whole. The vegan pizza costs a little more at $4.80 a slice, $13.90 for a half, and $28 whole. A vegan cheese pizza is $23.50 whole, and a vegan pie with no cheese at all is $19. A plain cheese pizza is the budget option at $19 whole or $3.20 a slice. Gluten-free pizzas carry their own prices, with a cheese pie at $12 and the day’s pizza at $16. The vegan gluten-free options are $14 for cheese and $17 for the vegan pizza of the day.

If you’re eating at lunch, aim for the daily special from 11am to 2pm. A slice, a small salad, and a bottle of water cost $9.50, and the vegan slice version is $10.50. Swap the water for a soda and it’s $11.50, or $12.50 with the vegan slice. Other deals include a fourth pizza at half price when you buy three. Beyond pizza, the extras are short: a small salad for $5, a party salad for $20, and guacamole with chips for $7.50. The drink list covers sodas, juices, beer, wine, and a sea moss pineapple drink.

The kitchen story matters for a vegetarian, so here it is. Everything is meatless, and the vegan pizzas use vegan cheese. Dimond Slice doesn’t publish how it handles shared ovens or prep surfaces for vegan orders. If you avoid dairy for strict reasons, tell the counter when you order.

The people behind it come from the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley. Artemio Maldonado and Dwight Ferron met there, opened Sliver in downtown Berkeley in 2013, and later brought their vegetarian pizza to Oakland with Ferron’s wife, Gloria. You can taste that lineage in the daily format. It’s a Cheese Board idea at neighborhood scale.

Practical notes: the shop sits at 2208 MacArthur Boulevard, open Tuesday through Sunday from 11am to 8pm and closed Mondays. The phone number is 510-842-8773. If you’d rather stay home, you can order through Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Postmates.

Plan on a slice and a salad for a quick lunch, or grab a half of each daily pizza and share both. Order the vegan pie of the day first, and ask what’s coming tomorrow.