Ohio Pizza-politan Adventures: North High Pie and Rising

Ain't nothing wrong with a little char: the pies of Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza
help make the north part of North High Street a bit of a pizza destination 

If one remembers, what has become a more or less regular series of posts on this blog was inspired by the simple question of whether the little town of Worthington was, in terms of sheer numbers, the the pizza capital of Central Ohio. We never did find a definitive answer for that question due to a number of factors, but we did realize as the end of the year was coming that we really hadn't explored for anything new in this area in quite awhile.

We considered that fact as more than enough incentive to get back to this pizza-heavy corridor of the metro, as we dropped by two places less than a mile from each other on the northern reaches of High Street in the area between Old Beechwold and Worthington.

Broad & Delicious: Our Dream Casual Columbus Culinary Street Corners

The Short North has many naturally occurring delicious culinary street corners
that threaten to increase your waistline more than you'd like

Back when my spouse and I were still officially in our long-distance dating phase, we would talk a lot about local neighborhoods and where ideally we'd like to settle down in, had we the choice. One of the common positive aspects to us were houses that were within easy distance of numerous instances of delicious eats (we also thought it would be a bit dangerous too, as the temptation would always be there to go forgo the kitchen and dine out again and again.)

Even though we've settled down (alas, nowhere near easy walking distance to culinary bliss), discussion on this "dream culinary street corner foursome" concept has continued to this very day, and across numerous categories (breweries, pizzerias, coffee cafes, etc.)  It was only recently, after a particularly long work day, that I figured out that this would make a fun topic for a blog post.

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".

Behind The Groove: Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza

In my life, I really haven't had too many real-life interactions with women named Natalie. In fact, perhaps the most "intimate" (and that is a huge stretch of that word meaning) encounter with someone named Natalie was the ex-10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant, who put on a fun concert with the Columbus Symphony orchestra at the Columbus Commons in July, 2013.

This situation has changed over the past couple years, and this seems to be destined to be a fairly long-lived relationship. This Natalie not only has a way with music, but also crafts some pretty tasty pizzas to boot.