Panzera's Pizza

Panzera's Pizza has been keeping Grandview satisfied for a half century plus. The shop serves classic thin crust like many others in the area that's simply better than most of them.

The crust is a soft pocket in the middle blanketed by by a crisp exterior. Pizzas were served with a nice amount of browning from the oven, including the toppings.

Toppings include most of the old school classics. The shop sells beer and wine. There is a limited amount of dining spaces. Panzera's delivers.

The veggie pizza was covered with mushrooms, green peppers, onions and banana peppers. It's pretty traditional, The diced white onions might not be for everyone.

There are plenty of outstanding pizza options in the Grandview/5th-by-Northwest/Upper Arlington area. Panzera's stands out if you're in the mood for a simple thin crust pie.

Apizza Scholls

Apizza Scholls is the place that put pizza in Portland on the map. Featured on No Reservations and named to best-of lists like Food & Wine Magazine's best pizza places in the U.S., the wood-fired pies from Brian Spangler's shop are worthy of the hype.

There are plenty of seats in Apizza Scholls, which occupies two storefronts, but reservations are still a good idea. Business at the restaurant stops when they run out of the dough that was made for the day.

The pizza is a little bit of a hybrid between New York thin crust and New Haven style. The 900-degree oven deliciously scorches the exterior of the crust, but it gives the interior a delightful chew. 

The menu offers up many classics, rooted in the bounty of local ingredients. Service was friendly and evenly paced.

 The Dirty Pizza was a special. It is a plain cheese pizza dusted with fresh parmesan and herbs including oregano, basil, rosemary and sage. It was topped with heirloom tomatoes after the bake. The fresh ingredients delivered on a soft, almost buttery crust were a perfect expression of the summer.

The Margherita added mozzarella to the cheese base, and ribbons of fresh basil and slivers of roasted garlic were sliced across the surface of the pie. It was an understated, nearly flawless take on the original.

It is a good idea to grab a few appetizers to make waiting for pizza go by with fewer hunger pangs. The salads and antipasti are popular choices.

The wine and beer lists rely heavily on Oregon producers. With pizza this artful, it's a tough call which beverage would be the better pairing.

La Tavola

La Tavola resurrects an old name run by area favorite Rick Lopez. Lopez had a hand in Columbus' original haute Mexican outpost Tapatio, the old Polynesian-themed Kahiki and the fast-casual and (temporarily) closed Knead. La Tavola was open from 1999 to the late 2000s in Powell and Dublin. The new restaurant is on 1st Avenue in Grandview.

House made and seasonal items make up the backbone of the menu. There are not a tremendous number of vegetarian items on the menu. There is a vegan pizza. The server checked with the kitchen on specific vegetarian concerns. 

The space is open, and the decor is warm and inviting. The ironic wall paper also doubles as the background on the restaurant website. 

The pasta was magnificent. The strozzapretti, a loose, eggless pasta twirled into a tight, lengthy s-shape, was bathed in kale pesto, mushroom, green beans, yellow pepper and shallots.

The bar had a small but well chosen selection of draft beer. There are also sodas from Boylan's and Grown Up, as well as Brioso coffee.

Desserts are prepared by Krista Lopez. There is bound to be something to like on the list of Italian sweets which go from tiramisu to gelato and semifreddo.

Hudson 29

Hudson 29 is the latest Cameron Mitchell concept, and the first one opened this year in Upper Arlington on Lane Avenue. The kitchen produces classic steakhouse fare and sandwiches paired with sushi and flatbread pizza.

The menu has a couple of vegetarian options, and the staff dealt well with questions about dietary restrictions. Service at the restaurant, however, was uneven beyond that. 

While one lunch visit in a nearly empty restaurant saw attentive service and great attention to detail, a second night visit was severely overbooked on reservations. My reservation seating was 90 minutes late, and while the front of house offered free cocktails because of the delay, it did not make up for the continued service issues in the dining room. The server never brought water to the table despite numerous requests. Other orders were delivered incorrectly. It would be kind to say the experience was a disappointment.

The food was from chef Jonathan Basch was very good despite the hemorrhaging service flaws. The veggie burger, in particular, was a standout. The house made black bean patty was topped with pepper jack, avocado, lettuce, tomato, red onion and sweet pickle mayo. It was served on a toasted bun.

The cheesy bread rolls are a worthwhile expense. The arugula salad was forgettable.

The vegetable flatbread was piled with arugula pesto, shiitake mushrooms, kalamata olives, pickled red onions and fresh arugula. The flavor is a nice blend of savory, salty and fresh vegetable notes that play together nicely with  subtle garlic.

The wine list is heavy on New World labels with some fun choices. There are limited brews with Rockmill carrying the local banner. Cocktails were a nice mix of classics with a few more modern spins.

The dining room and sushi bar are sleek and modern with a nice organic warmth. The couches in the waiting area by the fireplace create an inviting place to relax while waiting for a table.

An inviting space and a few tasty morsels from the kitchen, however, will not be enough to save the place if the front of house is unable to control its reservations book. Improvements in execution will be needed if the restaurant concept is to be duplicated successfully.

Halwani Cuisine

Halwani Cuisine is a pizza shop along the Grandview strip. Shawn Halwani's restaurant makes thin crust and hand tossed pizzas, and the menu is pork-free for kosher/halal diners.

The restaurant has pizza, stromboli, sandwiches and standard pizza kitchen sides. The hand tossed crust is still relatively thin with hints of garlic in the dough. The thin crust is cut tavern style and is cracker thin.

Meatless specialty pizzas include the Margarita, Napoletana, vegetarian, Greek and white pizza. Topping are fresh and plentiful.

The Margarita pizza had classic toppings including fresh tomato and basil. The basil was slightly overdone, and it would have been improved if it were added later in the process. Despite the minor flaw, the pizza was excellent.

Halwani Cuisine is reasonably priced. The majority of business is delivery and take out. It is a good change-of-pace pizza option in an increasingly more competitive marketplace in the Grandview/Upper Arlington area.

Red Brick Tap and Grill

The Red Brick Tap and Grill was thoroughly transformed by the owner of Easy Street Cafe. Walls once decorated with ghastly baseball caricatures now have been replaced by neon lights and a fun comic book montage. The cheap but limited bar has now been replaced by one with a wider selection of taps.

The bar changed through the years. The kitchen once sold DiGiornio Frozen Pizzas, advertising it as if the brand name were a badge of honor five years ago. The new menu is a big step up from those roots. 

The atmosphere also makes Red Brick more welcoming than it used to be. There are still plenty of dive bars in Merion Village if the place seems too refined for your tastes.

There is a decent amount of vegetarian items on the menu, which is classic pub grub including sandwiches, pizza, calzones and bar staples including soft pretzels that can be dipped in a rich beer cheese soup. There is a nice variety to the offerings.

The veggie burger is a grilled mushroom cap that has the perfect texture to deliver layers of smoky flavor. It is topped with spinach, artichoke, onions and mild white cheese.

The pizza, while certainly not good enough to knock Harvest off of its best pizza in the city pedestal, is certainly another excellent option for the neighborhood. The crust is a medium thick hand tossed pie available in small (12 inch) and large (16 inch) sizes as well as by the slice.

The veggie pizza is the Lisa Simpson. Topped with sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, mozzarella, smoked tofu, red onions, peppers, tomatoes and black olives, the pizza has great balance. The tofu acts like a vegetarian sausage, adding a nice savory punch to the sweetness of the vegetables.

Service for the most part was excellent. Vegetarian questions were answered quickly and effectively. The floor was extremely short staffed on a recent weekend, creating a delay in seating and meal service that was inconvenient. However, this was not the case with later visits. The staff performed well even with the deck stacked against it for one evening. 

The bar can fill Red Brick growlers for home consumption. The televisions surrounding the dining room make the place a good spot to watch sports.

Grandad's Pizza

Grandad's Pizza is a shop with two locations. The one in Grandview Heights is located on West 3rd Avenue next to a bar. The box boldly advertises that they deliver both beer and pizza if you're in a real time crunch and need both beer and thin crust pizza.

The pizza style is traditional in central Ohio. The cracker-thin crust is liberally dusted with cornmeal, giving the pie a sweet base to deliver toppings.

There are a standard variety of toppings. The sauce is light and sweet with a hint of garlic and basil.

The veggie pizza comes topped with tomatoes, green peppers, onions and mushrooms. The crispy crust adds a nice textural contrast to the weighty vegetables.

Overall, Grandad's is pretty middle of the road in terms of quality. It isn't great, but it carries a reasonable price. It's a decent pizza that isn't worth going out of the way to obtain.

Scratch Brick Oven Pizza

Scratch Brick Oven Foodworks fits right in its setting near the campus of Eastern Tennessee University in Johnson City. The decor is whimsical, the staff is fun and the pizza is way too good to pass up.

There are different ways to order pizza at Scratch. Diners can select from the list of specialty pizzas, or they can choose to build their own pie. They can also have Scratch staff build a pizza for them. At the counter, tell the pizza maker what ingredients they don't like, or even leave the experience completely in the hands of the kitchen. There is vegan and gluten-free pizza.

The wood-fired pizza oven puts a nice char on the medium-thick hand-tossed crust. This oven was built by the owners, and it also comes in handy with the bread sticks, which are essentially olive-oil-dressed pizza crust with a fresh pesto dipping sauce. 

The kitchen created a veggie pizza with red and green peppers, banana peppers, kalamata olives, squash, zucchini, spinach and mushrooms. The sauce was evenly balanced, and it supported the deep roasted vegetable flavor of the toppings. 

There is seating for about 20 inside Scratch. The order was announced via microphone when it was ready in the best impression of Casey Kasem. Diners are free to browse the store collection of records, which can be played in the dining room.

Scratch is BYOB. They also serve pop, including Cheerwine, the coolest cherry soda ever.

Mikey's Late Night Slice - Commons Cafe

Mikey's Late Night Slice is easily Columbus' most colorful pizza chain. Consisting of operations based in ramshackle buildings, food carts and bar kitchens, the pizza shops headed by a team including the namesake Mikey Sorboro feature a variety of New York style pizza slices prepared in such a way to blot out the damage of excessive drinking. Mikey's received national attention after a high profile event where service was refused to a gay bashing customer. It's more fun than fussy.

Each location has slightly different options based on its configuration. The latest spot in the Columbus Commons offers breakfast and sandwiches starting at early morning hours, a nice wrinkle for Downtown workers. The Commons Cafe also has 7-inch vegan pizzas with two toppings for $6.

The main attraction, though, is the pizza by the slice. I'm a fan of the Cheezus Crust, a grilled cheese sandwich made from two slices of pizza of your choice encasing slices of American cheese. There are a variety of sauces available as dips for the pizza, including the slut sauce (which is called Unmentionable Sauce in the PG environment of the Commons).

Pizza by the slice includes cheese with fresh basil and mushroom with roasted garlic. Slices are $3 each, and whole pizza specials run between $12 and $18.

There are three different meatless sandwiches for lunch. The veggie delight is made on a soft, toasted hoagie bun that is piled with tomatoes, mushrooms, banana peppers and provolone cheese. The adult grilled cheese two cheeses pressed Cuban style. 

Side dishes include tater tots, fried mac and cheese balls and fried ravioli. 

The Commons Cafe has been open for a short time. They were working through some patches of slow service during a few busier times when Mikey's first opened Downtown. Service speed has picked up, although it seems that the expanded menu doesn't hum along with quite the same precision as the PizzAssault Truck and the location next to Bodega. If it finally does start firing on all cylinders, it will be another great lunch option for vegetarian and vegan pizza-files.

Ha Ha Pizza

Ha Ha Pizza in Yellow Springs is the sort of place that really has to be experienced to be believed. It is a natural fit on the now low-key Antioch College campus. But once you see the pizza box and a building with a pot-smoking Italian pizzaiolo caricature and a psychedelic jackalope, you know that you've found the place that you heard about so many times before.  

The restaurant is a little rough around the edges, like some of the hippie employees and some of the more colorful clientele. The pizza, though, will make you forget about your aversion to patchouli. 

There is a pretty solid salad bar at Ha Ha available by the trip or all-you-can-eat. It's always nice to eat something healthy before you stuff your face full of pizza.

The pizza is a medium thick hand tossed crust that achieves a delicate crisp that can perfectly support an army of toppings. The whole wheat crust adds an extra level of flavor to an already excellent base.

The sauce is sweet and clean, adding a fresh acidity to the pie along with a hint of garlic and basil. The pizza had an excellent level of toast that brought all the ingredients together.

There are a ton of other veggie-friendly options at Ha Ha, including falafel as an appetizer and in a calzone, as well as a few tofu dishes. The star attraction, of course, remains, the pizza.

Savelli's

The Arlington/Grandview/Campus corridor has become quite the place for pizza over the last few years. Old standbys like Adriatico's, Tommy's and Hound Dog's have welcomed newcomers like Bono, Dewey's and Meister's to the neighborhood. Add Savelli's New York Style Pizza to the list of great places to grab a slice.

The place is tucked next to an apartment complex office and the neighborhood pub 14 Twenty Bar and Grill. The quality of the pizza belies the modest exterior and the off-the-beaten-path location.

The star attraction is the floppy New York thin crust pizza, available as a full pizza or by the slice. Prices are inexpensive: a slice of cheese is $2.25, and a whole eight-slice large pie starts at $14.

The pizza is an old family recipe, although the shop has been open in its location for about a year. The crust is soft and buttery, and the sauce is bright and refreshing. The dried herbs dusting the cheese add a punch of flavor. The toppings are high quality. While the pizza is somewhat underwhelming in terms of overall appearance, the flavor more than overcomes these limitations. 

The veggie pizza is topped with thinly sliced green peppers, excellent canned mushrooms and white onions. It is superior to the Margarita pizza, which lacked delicacy because of overcooked basil that should have been added when the pizza came out of the oven. It overpowered everything else on an otherwise well-made pie.  

One or two slices is a reasonable portion, although two people can put quite a dent into one 16-inch pie. 

The side salad is fairly average, a rudimentary iceberg, tomato and onion number with croutons and cheese.

There is a small, dark dining room in the restaurant with a take-out counter. Savelli's also delivers.

Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza

Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza is another in a long line of gourmet pizza shops catering to upper crust clientele in central Ohio. It offers a new American spin on New York style pizza with fresh ingredients sometimes combined into interesting pies.

While Natalie's whips up great looking pizza made from high quality ingredients in a fun setting, the service was slow and ineffective. The front of house was disconnected from the rest of the operation, misjudging seating time by more than an hour. Natalie's seems to suffer from a lack of identity, namely the confusion between being a restaurant and a concert venue.

The Clintonville/Worthington area pizzeria does have a great selection of beer and cocktails. I enjoyed a Great Lakes Alchemy Hour Double IPA. The bar has a great view of the oven, which turns out pizza quickly.

The hummus appetizer was wholly average. The chickpea dip had a smooth consistency that lacked flavor. The clumsy crudites are little more than a poorly executed garnish that belongs on a table at a graduation party.

The cheese plate had nice options, including a flavorful Quiejo Toledo, a Portuguese farmhouse cheese with a bright, creamy finish. While the cheeses and accoutrements were pleasant, the sliced orange garnish belongs on a cocktail or main course in an old-fashioned Chinese restaurant rather than on a cheese plate.

The pizza crust is thin and crispy with a tender chew, a little more so than the traditional New York pie. There are a number of meatless pizzas with an array of toppings. The whole tomato brought little to the classic Margherita pie.

Overall, Natalie's makes good pizza and great drinks, but uneven service makes dinner and late-night dining a challenge. It doesn't stand out well with all of the recent haute pizza joints that have opened in the past few years. Natalie's is a change of pace option that lags behind the best of the best spots.

Pizza from Meister's Bar

Hidden in the pizza paradise that is the Grandview/Upper Arlington/Columbus area, the pizza from Meister's Bar is an admirable take on Chicago style deep dish pie. The 16-inch deep dish is big enough to feed four people, some most likely entering a coma upon finishing a third slice.

The thin-crust pie is not particularly authentic to the Windy City area. It lacks the liberal cornmeal dusting that is common in Chicago thin pizza. It is a more traditional tavern cut pizza that is common in much of Ohio.  It's worth a try if somebody is too delicate for the deep dish. However, deep dish pizza is the star attraction.

The deep dish pies were served with variable levels of toasted crust. The first visit had golden edges, while subsequent pizzas were served with well-done edges. The overall difference was mostly cosmetic, although the texture of the browned crust made it a little tough to chew.

The bar has a decent selection of beers and is a sports bar humming with activity during Ohio State games. It sometimes gets hectic, especially during big football games.

Overall, Meister's offers a solid version of Chicago deep dish pizza. If I were ranking non-chain deep dish pizza in central Ohio, I would rank Wholly Joe's near Polaris best, Meister's (a.k.a. Pi Pizza) second, Tristano's third and Fabian's dead last. B.J.'s brewhouse, a chain out of California, offers a close take on Chicago thin crust pizza, but B.J.'s deep dish has more in common with Pizza Hut than Lou Malnati's. While the Meister's deep dish doesn't claim the local Chi-Town Crown, it is almost as good as what you'd get in the City of Big Shoulders.

Pies and Pints

Pies and Pints is a small pizza chain that started in West Virginia. The first central Ohio location opened in Worthington. If you watch as much food television as I do, you may have seen Pies and Pints on the Cooking Channel special Pizza Outside the Box. 

The concept is gourmet hand tossed pizzas paired with a choice selection of craft beers. There are standard options and more adventurous selections, like grape and gorgonzola pie that was on the Cooking Channel special. 

There are about 30 draft beers. There are plenty of Ohio brews available, including Weasel Boy, Columbus Brewing and Elevator.

There are a limited number of meatless appetizers and salads as starters. The chips and salsa, while not exactly typical pizza shop fare, are fresh and brightly flavored.

The rosemary garlic flatbread is served with a whipped goat cheese and balsamic dip. The appearance is one-note, lacking flash, but it tastes explosive. The tartness of the vinegar and the richness of the cheese flesh out the underlying smokiness of the bread.

The pizza crust is thick enough to hold a voluminous weight in toppings. Splitting a half-and-half large pizza is a good way to sample multiple varieties of the pies.

The roasted mushroom pizza was a perfect marriage of earthy essence punched by garlic. The garlic cloves were roasted so well that they melted in my mouth like a sweet whisper.

The black bean pie is a riff on the traditional Tex-Mex Mexican pizza. Beans take the place of red sauce, and they provide a medium-spicy base to the pie along with the ribbons of jalapeño  pepper. Cilantro gives it a nice freshness, and the creme fraiche adds a nice zip.

The pesto pizza is swirled with the ubiquitous green Italian sauce atop mozzarella and tomato. Tomato often gets a mushy texture when overcooked on a pizza; the Pies and Pints pizza was topped with perfectly cooked tomato.

The white pizza was classic for the style. Some of the ricotta pooled up into viscous pools that were overly pasty. While flawed, it was still very good.

The chocolate peanut butter brownie terrine is a nice conclusion to the meal if you save room for dessert. It looks as good as it tastes.

Service at Pies and Pints was mixed. A weekend evening visit had its expected wait time underestimated by about 40 minutes. Orders came slowly. A weekday visit saw much more even service. Consistency will need to be maintained if they're aiming for return business.

Carsonie's

The menu at Carsonie's has pizza and pasta and sandwiches. But the star attraction on is stromboli.

Carsonie's has a location in Upper Arlington as well as one in Westerville. The Upper Arlington location has a full bar.

The stromboli crust is thin with a crispy exterior. It stands up well to its substantial filling.

The vegetarian stromboli is stuffed with onions, black olives, artichokes, tomatoes and an ocean of cheese. The accompanying marinara sauce is sweet and adds a nice punch to the stromboli.

The decor at Carsonie's in Upper Arlington is heavy on local tchotchkes. There is a separate take-out entrance.

Food Cart wrap

Since it's getting cold outside, it's about time for me to clear the cache of the rest of the food trucks. Hopefully you can find them again when it warms up again.

After the food truck festival at Columbus Commons, I wrote about the Pickled Swine. The Pickled Swine is a deli truck. They didn't have many vegetarian items on their menu at the fest. However, after a recent visit, I discovered that the Pickled Swine has a veggie wrap and a couple of vegetarian sides on the menu.

On my first visit to the Pickled Swine, I was drawn to the house made popsicles. Flavors include sweet corn lemon and basil, cucumber lime and mint, black cherry and goat cheese, and dark chocolate mint and habanero.

The veggie sandwich is called the Oregonian. It is a cold salad wrap with lettuce and an assortment of veggies including spinach, peppers and mushrooms in a mustard dressing wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla.

The bowtie pasta salad is tossed with asiago cheese, pesto, roasted pine nuts, red and yellow peppers and pesto. It had a fresh flavor, and the color was so bright that it exploded.

My initial preconception that Pickled Swine was vegetarian unfriendly is unfounded. It's a fun truck that is worth checking out.

Nick's Pizza is a cart that appears around Columbus and Westerville. The pizza is stone baked and is akin to New York style pie.

The meatless slice at Nick's is the four cheese. It has a soft crust with a crunchy exterior. The cheese was nicely browned, and the sauce is bright and sweet.

Overall, the pizza at Nick's is solid. I have a preference for the pizza at Mikey's Late Night Slice, but Nick's Pizza would be worth a stop if it's in your area.

Columbus Food Truck and Cart Fest

Few culinary trends have exploded upon the dining scene over the last few years like food trucks. Despite the fact that mobile food vendors have been around for centuries longer than restaurants, only in the last few years has the trend evolved from cheap comfort food meant to nourish the working class to haute cuisine.

Columbus has been part of the food truck movement along with the rest of the country. On Aug. 26, a cadre of carts joined forces in the newly minted Columbus Commons to launch the Columbus Food Truck and Cart Fest.

Fans of some of Columbus' more popular mobile vendors found many of their favorites. Mikey's Late Night Slice, Rad Dog, Junior's Tacos, the Cheesy Truck and Mojo Tago were some of the bigger names in Columbus' food cart scene that appeared at the festival.

Many of Columbus' new carts and out-of-town operations also came, introducing some diners to the wide variety of fare that comes from kitchens on wheels.

One of the biggest names from out of town was Cleveland's Hodge Podge, a participant on the second season of the Food Network program The Great Food Truck Race. Hodge Podge proprietor Chris Hodgson's menu is meat-centric. Although there is a kimchi mac and cheese on the normal menu, the Columbus Food Truck and Cart menu lacked options for vegetarians.

I had never seen some of Columbus' new food trucks, and the fest brought them out in spades.

Earth's Crust Pizza/Krazy Monkey Juice Bar, a mainstay of the Global Gallery coffee house in Clintonville, debuted their new food truck. Earth's Crust has operated a cart at festivals around Central Ohio previously, but now they have a converted postal truck adorned with Rastafarian art and graffiti.

The pizza from Earth's Crust is excellent. The crust is prepared with Amish grain that the owner grinds into flour herself. The Dariya vegan cheese melts perfectly. The Spicy Jack pizza was made with pepperjack, roasted hot wax peppers, sweet corn and spicy marinara.

The Pickled Swine is a new Columbus food truck. Although their main dishes were a vegetarian wasteland, the most interesting-looking item on the menu, the gourmet popsicles in flavors like cucumber lime mint, Ohio sweet corn and basil, and black cherry goat cheese were tailor-made for a warm night like the evening of the fest.

The popsicles lacked intensity and sweetness, particularly the sweet corn and basil, which was a borderline savory exercise in confusion. It's a great idea for dessert, and hopefully further experimentation will allow for the flavor to be improved.

Kolache Republic operates at farmers' markets in Clintonville and Canal Winchester. They make kolache, a soft doughy Czech pastry with a variety of fillings. Kolache at Kolache Republic are the size of a doughnut, and come in flavors like sweet cheese (which was delightful) and raspberry.

Overall, the fest was fun. Many of the carts ran out of product, and lines also got long as the night progressed. Despite its shortcomings, the fest illustrated the popularity of mobile food in Columbus in addition to the fun food from kitchens on four wheels.

Element Pizza

Element Pizza is the latest pizzeria to open in Columbus. Housed in the old Plugged Nickel location, Element Pizza and Bar specializes in gourmet pizza and sandwiches.

The menu at Element also features salads and starters. Element will prepare off-the-menu vegan and vegetarian pizzas upon request. There is limited seating in addition to a room configuration that makes carry-out a simple proposition.

The eggplant fries are served with a garlic aioli. The chips at my last visit seemed to have been fried in not-quite-hot-enough oil that left the eggplant greasy. The flavor was pleasant, and probably would shine if the thinly sliced vegetable was fried to a better consistency.

The goat cheese and arugula salad had a bright flavor that shined. It was a fair portion for the price.

The apple and onion pizza contrasted the sweet flavor of Granny Smith apples and sauteed onions with the savory element of mozzarella and parmesan cheese. The crust is soft with subtle roasted noted that make the pizza surprisingly filling.

The cremini mushroom pizza was tasty, although the garlic was applied with too free of a hand. The tomato sauce had a tangy flavor that rescued the pie from oblivion.

The roasted red pepper sandwich was fantastic. It combined mushrooms and red peppers in a crustless Italian bread panini with a coarsely ground hot mustard. It's a great sandwich for $6.

Service is quick at Element Pizza. It will be interesting to see how a pizza shop of this caliber fares in the middle ground between the the center of Downtown and the Arena District.

Harvest Pizzeria

Harvest Pizzeria opened last week in German Village. The wood-burning oven turns out great pies topped with high quality ingredients accompanied by small plates and exciting cocktails.

The pizza ingredients are locally sourced when possible. Vegetables come from a Canal Winchester farm in the summer. The hickory and apple wood-fired oven cooks the crust to a perfect well done consistency.

Small plates include lavender honey and ricotta crostini and a seasoned olive plate. It is also possible to exclude meat from the meat-and-cheese plate.

The ricotta spread is flecked with orange zest and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. It has a great range of sweet and sour flavors. The bread adds a toasty element to the dish. The crostini were served with two slices of toasted bread the second time I ordered it, and the first order came with four. Four crostini work much better than two to enjoy the delicious ricotta spread.

The olives picked up the sage in which they were served. The cerignolo olives were mild and firm. The castelvetrano olives were soft and fruity. The giaraffa olives had a beautiful purple-red color and a bright salty flavor.

There are four meatless pizzas on the menu. The choices are Margherita, cheese, mushroom and mixed vegetable. You can also construct your own pizza.

The cheese pizza is made with Canal Junction Lock 21 cheese, mozzarella, provolone and parmesan. The sweet tomato sauce adds a great complexity to this gem of a pizza.

The vegetable pizza is topped with red onions, black olives, oven roasted red peppers and mushrooms. The combination of veggies goes together very well.

The mushroom pizza is made with various 'shrooms, the Lock 21 cheese and truffle salt. The earthy cheese's flavor explodes with the punch of truffle salt.

The cocktails are crafted as artfully as the pizza. The Front Porch tea is a John Daly -- sun tea and lemonade are blended 50/50 and spiked with Oyo vodka. The house margarita is sweet and peppery, made with El Jimador blanco tequila, Cointreau, grapefruit juice and habanero simple syrup. Harvest Pizzeria also has a nice selection of wine as well as a few house taps and beer in cans.

Harvest Pizzeria makes nice use of its space. The open kitchen is a fun view for those who order in. Service was capable if at times a little overbearing. Take-out orders travel surprisingly well.

The Wine Bistro

The Wine Bistro is, of course, a bistro with wine. There are locations in Upper Arlington and Worthington.

The menu at the Wine Bistro consists of sandwiches, soups, salads, flatbread pizzas and a variety of other items that pair well with wine. There are a substantial number of meatless entrees and appetizers at the Wine Bistro.

The dining room at the Upper Arlington location is tastefully appointed with wood. There is a decent amount of patio seating in addition to a small bar.

Vegetarian first courses include hummus and pita, seasoned olives, toasted mixed nuts, fondue, cheese plates, tomato basil soup and a few salads. It would be fairly simple to create a meal out of vegetarian tapas at the Wine Bistro.

The seasonal soup was a watermelon gazpacho. The bright fruit flavor added a sweet punch to an explosively flavorful summer classic.

Vegetarian main courses include a veggie wrap, pomodoro spaghetti and a couple of flatbread pizzas. The Juliette flatbread is topped with brie, pears, onions, garlic cream sauce and parmesan cheese. The thin, crispy crust adds a delightful crunch to the perfect pairing of double-cream cheese and tree fruit.

The veggie wrap is stuffed with green olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and greens with a garlic hummus. The flavor is bright and fresh.

The wine list has some nice by-the-glass selections. There are options from the new and old world, and prices are marked up fairly.

Service at the Wine Bistro is friendly and capable. The staff was easily able to address vegetarian dining concerns.

Wine Bistro