Groveport pizza cafe has classics

“THIS BOX Has Far more THAN JUST A PIZZA” is printed prominently on the branded cardboard packing containers used by Little Italy Pizza. For the reason that the information is figurative — the boxes virtually just consist of pizzas — an explanation for it is supplied, in a far more modest sort, by way of a brief historical past of the prolonged-beloved community eatery.

I’ll be briefer: Tiny Italy Pizza, which has been baking pizzas given that 1979, is a family members-operate organization in downtown Groveport (about a 20-moment generate from Columbus) that started as a grocery retail outlet in 1966. Echoing the pizza-box concept, Tiny Italy provides additional than just a simple pizzeria.  

To go with its many years-old legacy, Tiny Italy’s previously mentioned-and-past attributes include things like: tremendous-friendly services a quaint outdated making with a scarlet-and-grey facade sprouting eco-friendly awnings plus wood-everywhere you go, recreation-roomlike inside with sports activities-tuned TVs supplying craft beers even though also self-describing as “home of the $5 pitcher” of Bud Gentle cooking crowd-satisfying pizzas with very good ingredients and household recipes, but also getting ready two handmade pasta dishes — a person is worth the travel from Columbus by yourself — adorned with standout, property-produced meatballs. 

All those pork-and-beef delights are obtainable in different guises, the most clear-cut staying the meatball mozzarella appetizer ($7.95): A few major, juicy, tender and zesty meatballs coated in melted mozzarella and a marginally sweet tomato sauce as rich as it was vibrant. A deeply toasted, oversized garlic breadstick was provided for mop-up duty.

Crushed meatballs in tomato sauce are neatly presented as a pizza topping, much too. They be part of other flavor-bomb meats — additional-spicy capicola, peppercorn-spiked salami plus Ezzo pepperoni and very good Italian sausage clumps — on properly-baked pizzas minimize into rectangles that attribute yeasty and skinny, but not crackery, crusts with crunchy, approximately flat edges.

Selling prices begin at $9.99 for a smaller pie blanketed with oven-browned, good cheese. Multi-topping specialty pizzas, which supply fine values, array from $13.49 for a 10-inch little to $24.45 for an aptly described “extra-large” 16-inch pie.       

Even though explained as a more recent presenting, the Threezo specialty pizza, which was loaded with two kinds of pepperoni (that had been similarly crisp, spicy and to start with-fee) moreover sausage, had all the traits of a nearby typical.

The chunky, extremely recommended All Meat pizza — a taste-bud bonanza that robustly shows this place’s strengths — tweaks that successful recipe by piling on additional meats: salami, capicola, bacon and, crucially, crushed meatballs. These extras imply that pepperoni isn’t the entrance-and-heart ingredient, so pepperoni-obsessed sorts might want to tack on the Crispy Sicilians appetizer ($6.99) — fried pepperoni chips served with a “dip” of (don’t pretend to be shocked) ranch dressing.