The Veg Edge

The Veg Edge is a one-hour special that airs regularly on the Cooking Channel, Scripps' new cousin to the Food Network. Since I spend about 20 hours or more per week watching foodie-centric television, it was time to pass on the fruits of these labors.

This program highlights trends in vegetarian dining nationwide. Some of the places and people featured on The Veg Edge include the veggie dining scene in Austin (including Casa de Luz, Daily Juice, Mr. Natural Vegetarian and vegan food carts like Iggi's Vegan Texatarean and the Vegan Yacht), a seasonal prix fixe restaurant in Seattle called Sutra, adorable vegan pastry chef (and Cupcake Wars champion) Chloe Coscarelli, New York haute cuisine outposts like Dirt Candy and Dovetail (which features a meatless Monday menu although it isn't a vegetarian restaurant), the vegan web show Heavy Metal Vegan, and the vegetarian scene in Portland, which runs the gamut from food carts like Native Bowl, Magic Beans, Sushi Tree, Ruby Dragon and Homegrown Smoker, higher end places like Blossoming Lotus and Portobello Vegan Trattorria, and the fantastic Portland vegan mini mall, with animal product-free shopping for every part of your life from the kitchen to your tattoo collection.

This show does an excellent job highlighting how national dining trends such as food carts are catering to growing segments of the population (i.e. vegetarians). It also shows how the increasing sophistication and internationalization of the American palate has created a wider variety of dining options for vegetarians as well as those looking to minimize their intake of animal products

Adriatico's

It just looks delicious, doesn't it? You can feel your blood sugar skyrocketing and your arteries hardening just thinking about pizza. Adriatico's New York Style (misnomer) pizza, an Ohio State institution, can do all these things with ease, and it tastes pretty damn good doing so.

Adriatico's is always on the top of Columbus' pizza rankings. I'm not sure if there actually are officially sanctioned pizza rankings like the college football AP poll or whether it is a more informal consensus system, but the rankings always see Adriatico's near the top.

(Actually, according to the menu, Adriatico's was voted People's Choice Best Pizza in the Columbus Pizza Challenge six times in an event that is no doubt the BCS championship game of Franklin County's pizza championship series.)

I tried the pan pizza (called Sicilian crust) with green peppers and mushrooms. The crust is thick, buttery and loaded with garlic. There is also a thin crust that I did not try. The sauce is tart and slightly sweet. The mushrooms are real mushrooms rather than canned factory fungus.

The large pizza is enormous and could feed four hungry people. The Buckeye size is even bigger than that and could feed every Bears quarterback during the Brett Favre era for what I would guestimate is about a week.

There is a relatively standard list of toppings available. There is a specialty vegetarian pizza with onions, green peppers, mushrooms, green olives and extra cheese, as well as a sliced tomato pizza with black olives, onions, green peppers and mushrooms. There is also a veggie zoni (calzone) and a veggie sub as well as salads and breadsticks. But the main attraction remains the pizza.

Check out the pictures and stop in Adriatico's to get your fill of fat and carbs...I might need somebody to help me finish the pie!

Adriatico's New York Style Pizza