The Greater Columbus Pizza-politan Area

The Ohio State University Campus: a heavy (unsurprisingly) pizza area

As covered in my last blog post, a simple question about Worthington being the pizza capital in terms of ratio of pizza to people proved to be a lot more complicated than I would have thought at first glance. A lot of it has to do with geography - ragged city borders from years of annexation and the normal flow of business means some popular destinations for the city's residents are actually not in Worthington proper.  But as a countering force, there is a hometown pizza aspect that does drive diners to prefer one pizza place over another.

With obviously other factors at play like price and convenience, I figured that a bigger picture was needed and that all pizza places in the area needed to be mapped. Who knows, similarly sized suburbs like Bexley or Grandview Heights might be more pizza-rich than Worthington, or maybe I could pinpoint some relative pizza hot spots. So a couple weeks after I started looking into the topic, I broke out my Google Maps and centered it on the Columbus area and punched in the word "pizza".

First Look: Leone's Pizza

As we have discovered, the area within and surrounding the city of Worthington is loaded with pizza options, from the old timers (Pizza House and Villa Nova, to name two) to the newcomers (Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza and Cincinnati-based Dewey's.) Some might say there's too much pizza available around this area compared to other options, but pizza lovers may consider that to be a sacrilegious notion.

You can now add Leone's Pizza to these throngs of pie makers and, based on our first tasting, this is one to keep an eye on.

Leone's Pizza opened last Friday in the old Pizza Mart space in Salem Village, As this was my first visit to this location, it was plainly obvious that this small space is geared more to takeout. However, they actually do a good job of stuffing in more tables and chairs than you think might fit within this eatery's footprint.