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    Aficionadough: Little Italy Pizza – A Lesson in Geography

    Geography plays a critical role in pizza consumption and ideation. Water buffalos found their way to South Central Italy in the seventh century, but it took until the 12th century for a new style of cheese made with their milk called Mozzarella di Bufala Campana to become a favored staple in the region. The tomato arrived in Italy around 1548 but did not transform into an accepted staple food in the region surrounding Naples until the 1800s. Them BAM! Like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials of the 1970s, two great tastes that go great together – mozzarella paired with tomatoes transformed into sauce – became the core ingredients for the pizza created in Naples, Italy.

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    Just over 200 years later while the concept of pizza is known the world over and most acknowledge that the dish as we know it originated in Naples, there remain very provincial attitudes about what pizza is. In particular, and although not presently listed as a diagnosable disorder in the DSM-5-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision), there is a psychiatric condition at pandemic levels that affects residents of New York City and parts of the east coast. The core symptom is an irrational intolerance of pizza in any other form other than what the consumer has been indoctrinated in since youth. Side effects of this disease include belligerence, geometric rage, bewilderment, very concrete thinking and an obsession with triangles.

    Danger: this rectangle can cause pizza rage

    The world has changed since the dawn of pizza in Columbus and we now have more than just the Yellow Pages to help us discover pizza places, but has our outlook on pizza evolved? Many people pick a few nearby neighborhood pizza joints and stick with them for the majority of their residential lives. While I don’t have the skills or the resources to research this in depth, my hypothesis is that most people have a pizza place within 15 minutes of their home that they commit to due to a desire to have hot pizza served to them whether it is pick up or delivery. However, the change of demographics and the rise of delivery options over the last 20 years has led to more pizzeria promiscuity. Fortunately, I am not constrained by a need to eat any pizza at a core temperature and I have an incurable wanderlust that prevents me from being content with the food and experiences within a short radius of my home.

    I spent two years researching Central Ohio pizzerias from 1950 to the present. In spite of all of this and perhaps due to the barriers of geography, I did not know that Little Italy Pizza in Groveport existed until 2021. This is exceedingly odd especially since the origins of the business date back to 1979. What kept me away? A journey to Groveport is certainly not a daunting task for a world traveler such as myself, it is a mere 18 miles from my home per Google Maps.

    How did Little Italy finally get on my radar? An old fashioned technology called radio. The antiquated format of QFM 96 which seemingly plays a Little Italy commercial whenever the frequency lands on my radio dial. The constant propaganda about an unknown pizza place intrigued me. Moreso, I really looked forward to these commercials as an escape from the endless onslaught of erectile dysfunction and other “man issues” products that are hawked to the station’s demographic. I certainly felt a rise whenever the Little Italy commercial came on and I was determined to make it my mission to get there.

    Over the Scioto River and through the I70/I270 Freeway interchange I did go. I arrived at the tiny hamlet of Groveport finding Little Italy planted firmly in the center of the commercial business district at 619 Main St. I felt at home the moment I walked through the door. The vibe and aesthetics of the place quickly transported me to the pizzerias of my youth. My research assistant for this mission hails from the greater Bowling Green region and he too felt an affinity for this place, finding it reminded him (in ambiance but not pizza style) of one part Pisanello’s and two parts Pagliai’s.

    While we were soaking in the atmosphere of the place, I presented the candidates for our order, and a discussion ensued about the difference between a pizzeria and a pizza parlor. The differences in definition are not delineated in Wikipedia or elsewhere, but I use different terms for the sake of concept economy. A pizzeria is a pizza-driven business with a small menu and a primary focus on carry out or delivery. Local examples of this would be Terita’s, Rubino’s and Emelio’s. A pizza parlor generally devotes at least one half of its offerings to food on the non-pizza Italian spectrum, features more than bare bones seating, and offers a few distractions for kids that may be lingering more than 15 minutes, such as a few video games, pinball or some other amusement invented before smartphones. In this category, I think of the parlors of my youth which always applied a lot of creativity to squeeze in a tabletop Pac-Man or Galaga into the borderlands between dining areas and bathroom or storage areas. Little Italy is definitely a pizza parlor with the new fangled addition of lottery machines to their mix of pinball and background music.

    Observing the deep, wide booths and long, interchangeable tables, Little Italy is configured for family, little league and company outing consumption. Most of the staff looked to be sourced from the local high school and despite any stereotype, all exhibited a high level of customer focus and service. We took time to soak in the experience as we leisurely lingered on our expanded meal selections while to my right, two different families / parties came, saw, conquered and paid their bill, turning over the adjoining table two-and-a-half times.

    Also in the ambiance category, I was pleased to find rabbit pellet style ice in my frequently refilled cup. While Little Italy has served from the present location since the early 1980s, the building itself dates back to at least 1935 based on business history supplied to me by the third generator proprietor, Avery Ward. The wooden floors look much older and more well trodden than that. Photos of family, Lockbourne / Rickenbacker Airbase alumni and other mementos, including an autographed photo of an astronaut, adorn the walls. (By the way, the spaceman says this pizza is out of this world, he should know.) Not quite fitting the motif of the pizza parlor, a very modern, almost progressive, framed logo embedded in a glass sign listing the mission, promise and values of Little Italy (and the Ward family) hung on the wall.

    Time to move on to our order and the rationale behind it. We started with wings. We received five, which were large and well prepared. I don’t typically order wings at a pizza place so I can’t tell you why I took this path, but I did not regret it.

    There was only one choice I could make among the pizza selections, the Threezo: pepperoni, Sicilian pepperoni and a special spicy Italian sausage, topped with a Romano Parmesan blend. I could not detect a radical difference in flavor among the three formerly encased meats, but there was variation in texture and crispness among the trio. It should be mentioned, with pride, that both types of pepperoni on the Threezo are from local favorite Ezzo Sausage Company. The Little Italy spin on pizza leans strongly in the direction of Columbus style with a crust that is a bit thicker than a cracker. The combination of all of the ingredients created a crowd pleaser for both bellies in the recon party and very few pieces made it home at the end of the evening.

    The Threezo at Little Italy

    Although my dining companion felt my ordering may have been a bit excessive, there were two more mandatory dishes I felt were critical to assessing Little Italy. Any first trip to a pizzeria or pizza parlor should include an Italian Sub or a Meatball Sub. In this instance, I opted for Italian so as to not overdo meatball consumption. To slam dunk the jumping of the shark, I asked for a double meat sub. I am always afraid that I will be disappointed by a lack of meat on a sub, the double meat ensured this would not occur. The two halves disappeared quickly on both sides of the table, with my dining assistant stating that it hit the high notes on all of his sub metrics. It scored well on my matrix as well, which is significant. I have impossibly high standards for any sub to score a 10 with my key elements including: where the bun is sourced from and how the bread is toasted; how many sesame seeds are embedded in it; the thickness and quality of meats; the level of meltiness of the cheese (with some crispy bits on the edges); the placement of Italian Dressing (on top) and mayonnaise (on the bottom) and last, but not least lettuce and bananas peppers should be placed in the sub after it is released from the oven and neither should be no more than room temperature. This was the standard I adopted when I worked at Knight’s Ice Cream in my formative years and I have been unwilling to yield to anything else since, so it is rare for a sub to score over 8.5 with me. Little Italy earned an 8.5 and I would gladly order the sub again.

    Italian Sub

    The last item on my ticket was something I viewed as quintessential to evaluating the Little Italy experience. Fettuccini El Forno is a house specialty. It includes: homemade pasta, a secret sauce recipe, a mound of crushed, house-made meatballs and heaps of cheese, with the motley mix baked until the cheese is golden brown. In all of my research on Little Italy, the meatballs were ubiquitous to any mention of the business so this allowed me to sample the meatballs while also allowing me to assess other in-house made items. Also, critical to this assessment is the presence of a side salad which let me try the special house-made salad dressing whose popularity over the years has dictated that Little Italy sell it by the pint, quart and in the not so distant future, bottles will be available to the masses.

    The El Forno was a good pizza parlor dish. However, it was hard to really evaluate the meatballs in their deconstructed form. I will correct this on a future visit by ordering the Meatball Mozzarella starter (it includes three homemade beef and pork meatballs, oven cooked, bathed in tomato sauce and topped with fresh mozzarella, parmesan and provolone cheese). Perhaps because they were in a smashed format in the El Forno, I had a hard time discerning the meatballs from the sausage on the pizza. No complaints here because all of this means more research is required.

    Fettuccini El Forno

    My dining companion and I both enjoyed the house-made salad dressing. We could not determine all of its ingredients. It did have a slight pinkish hue to it. I was so intrigued by this mystery that I contacted Ward for more information.

    “The dressing recipe is my grandma’s Italian dressing,” Ward shared. “She made it for all the family events and nightly dinners. When her and my grandpa opened the pizza shop that was one of the things that hit the menu. It’s been a customer favorite ever since.”

    The other item I wish we would have had room for is the Gunner sub, which is their Italian Sub served with an Italian Sausage link on top. This name mandated that I ask Ward about its origins, so here is the back story.

    “We were experimenting with a new sub and my dad took one home to try,” Ward said. “He placed it on the counter when he got home and stepped away from it for a quick minute. When he got back there was his dog (Gunner) enjoying the then named ‘Gunner Sub.’”

    Little Italy provides a great excuse to go a bit outside of your normal pizza radius and travel back in time for a pizza parlor experience. Speaking of geography, Little Italy is likely to move to a new Groveport location at the end of 2022. The business plans to set up on the first floor the Wert’s Grove Building, located at 480 Main St. (Just 0.2 miles down the road from the current location.) The location will offer more space, a designated bar area and is likely to scoop out ice cream as well creating dining and entertainment options for all ages. (Get a peek at the renderings for the space below.)

    To plan for your own parlor exploration, visit littleitalygroveport.com.

    All photo by Jim Ellison

    Little Italy Rendering courtesy M+A Architects
    Little Italy Rendering courtesy M+A Architects
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    Jim Ellison
    Jim Ellison
    Jim Ellison has been eating his whole life and has gotten pretty good at it. Along the way, he started writing about his adventures for his blog, CMH Gourmand (in 2006), magazines, websites and even content for the early days of CU. In the realm of pizza, most recently he wrote the book, 'Columbus Pizza: A Slice of History' however long-time Columbus Underground fans will recall him as the instigator of Pizza Grand Prix I - VI. Writer, eater, enabler and champion for mom & pop pizzerias, he covers pizza places, pizza culture and occasionally other culinary rabbit holes as our carb-craving correspondent. You will find him on Instagram at @CbusPizzaHistory. 
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