Verdi (7770 Olentangy River Road)

Verdi is a tiny Italian restaurant in the Worthington Hills area. It's on old 315 just north of Hard Road, on the east side of the street. It's in the same strip mall as Hill's Market and can't easily be seen from the road. There are only seven tables in the place and they're so close together that it's hard to stand up from your seat without bumping people at the table behind you. At any given time, the buffet contains a salad station, a single pizza, a calzone, and a bowl of pasta. On busy days, the buffet often runs out of pizza, and you have to pick at your salad or pasta while you wait for a fresh pie. The place appears to have only one employee, who is definitely not Italian (we'll call him The Proprietor).

So why four spots?

Because the pizza is the best I've ever eaten at a buffet, hands down. It's a thin-crust pie you can fold up and eat New York style, cut into big triangles the way God and Tony Soprano intended, topped with fresh mozzarella and sweet, not-too-spicy pepperoni. And you'd better like pepperoni, because that's the only kind of pizza you'll find at Verdi's buffet. (Yougoddaproblemwiddat?) Quality trumps quantity: one Verdi's pepperoni pizza is better than the twelve varieties of cardboard-crust pie you'll find at Cici's. The sauce is delicious and The Proprietor thoughtfully puts out a dish of it in case you want to dip your crusts.

The calzone is as almost as good as the pizza. Great crust, fresh green peppers and onions, ham, pepperoni, and sweet Italian sausage. The Proprietor mixes that same sweet Italian sausage with his marinara sauce and penne pasta to provide the third element of the Verdi Trinity: pizza, calzone, pasta. Three discrete entities that come together in one unified Buffet. Sacre-licious.

Well, technically, there's a fourth element: salad. It seems fresh enough, especially the cheese, which is probably the same "moots-a-dell" found in the pizza. But the salad is strictly there in a supporting role, and if you eat too much of it, you're wasting valuable stomach capacity that could be better applied to pizza, pasta, and calzone.

The all-you-can-eat lunch with a Pepsi and tax is $7.74. Whether to tip at a buffet is entirely up to you, but I always do, because in addition to meeting the challenges of running a sole proprietorship, The Proprietor makes a really great pizza. Alla salute!

Lido's Buffet (Carriage Place - Bethel & Sawmill)

The road to the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet is paved with good intentions.

In an effort to make amends for all the greasy lunches I normally eat, I packed a Healthy Choice frozen dinner last week. Ostensibly, the meal contained beef tips in barbecue sauce, but it tasted more like styrofoam cubes smothered in brown ketchup. Not only was the meal lousy, but I was hungry again 90 minutes later. This experience reinforced my belief that no man should eat anything with the word "Healthy" on the box.

I made amends the next day by visiting an old favorite - Lido's Buffet in Carriage Place. Lido's has been in that location for at least fifteen years, serving up good pizza and fresh salads. There are usually other entrees as well, such as wings, popcorn shrimp, stromboli, or pasta, and good homemade soup.

Lido missed the boat that day, he left the shack
But that was all he missed, he ain't comin' back...

Remember Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle"? No? Then you're quite a bit younger than I am.

I invited a coworker who's a fan of Cici's Pizza. Cici's provides good service and a variety of pies at a bargain price, but to me, their crust always tastes like high school cafeteria pizza. I didn't like high school cafeteria pizza even when I was in high school, so I hoped the extra driving distance to Lido's would pay off.

Lido's didn't let me down. The restaurant looks the same as it always has - dark-green carpet, burgundy wallpaper, and as many booths and tables as they can cram into a strip-mall restaurant. And they need as many seats as they can get, because even on a Wednesday, the place was packed with customers by noon.

We passed through the buffet from right to left, and here's what we found:

* Fresh salad greens (mostly iceberg lettuce) with a variety of toppings and dressings
* Three kinds of pizza: one pepperoni, one pep and sausage, one veggie "half and half" with green peppers and onions on one half and diced tomatoes and onions on the other
* Italian wedding soup
* Chicken wings
* A penne pasta dish with diced chicken in a cheesy white sauce

Lido's pizza offers a well-baked crust of medium thickness and plenty of cheese - a good delivery-quality pie. And it's always fresh, because the crowd depletes the pizza station so fast that the cooks can barely keep up. Somehow they do - about the time the station was down to its last slice, a cook brought fresh pie from the kitchen.

The salad was unremarkable, but all the ingredients were fresh. And isn't that all that's important, given the strictly supporting role salad plays at a pizza buffet?

The penne pasta dish was a pleasant surprise - a little lukewarm, but very tasty. I ate so much of it I didn't have room to try the soup.

My coworker reports that the wings were "much better than BW-3." I've had good wings and lousy wings at BW-3, so take his comment with a grain of salt and a Wet-Nap.

The soda glasses are huge - a nice touch, given that some buffets give you a Dixie cup of Pepsi and look askance at you when you expect three refills. No refills necessary at Lido's, unless sixty ounces of high-fructose corn syrup isn't enough for you.

So why four grease spots instead of five? Two reasons. First, our server never brought us silverware or napkins, which we sourced from the buffet. Other diners were provided with a fork and knife wrapped in a napkin. Like Joe Pesci in GoodFellas, I hate being on the "pay no mind" list. Second, with drink and tip, the price is dangerously close to $10/person. Lido's once encouraged regulars to return by providing "$1 off" coupons, good for your next visit. Apparently they've stopped that - unless our coupons were off someplace with our silverware.

Lido be runnin' havin' great big fun
'Til he got the note...

This is the end of an era for me, because for years, I've never been without a Lido's coupon in my wallet. The food's still good, so I'll go back to Lido's - but probably not as often as I once did. Enjoy the buffet, but don't expect much change back from a ten-dollar bill.

Sbarro's (Mall at Tuttle Crossing)

5043 Tuttle Crossing Blvd, Dublin, OH

I'm a sucker for a big slice of New York-style pizza. It's the simplest damn thing, but one of life's great pleasures. Alas, a good slice is hard to find. My monthly temptation is Sbarro, located quite close by and purporting to be the real deal.

What I usually find, unfortunately, is that once again they have not lived up to expectations. I have a vague recollection of getting decent pizza there at some point in my life. Perhaps I was drinking at the time. Nonetheless, every month, I check to see if the fast-food turnover has worked in my favor. I usually see new faces, but get the same pizza.

More investigation of the franchise at large is in order, but the Sbarro's at the mall has a particular problem, which they manage to compound. First, it always seems undercooked. My New York friends will always call in a pizza order and ask for "a pie, well-done." Gives the cheese and the crust a bit more crisp. I don't need that. I just like to avoid eating raw dough.

When you order your slice or two (they do look so tasty sitting there in front of you), the guy behind the counter whisks them away and sticks them in the oven to warm up. However, they never seem to keep them in there long enough, and the undercooked pizza you get usually winds up being lukewarm at best, and pretty cold at worst.

The stromboli is not bad, though the last time I ordered it (coincidentally) it was garnished with hair.

This is a franchise I pathetically keep hoping will turn around. With all we have available to us today in this city, why should it be so hard to get a slice of pizza?

Maybe next month.