Restaurant Review: Scratch-Made Focaccia Star of the Show at Piazza Pelino

The Pelino name in Columbus is synonymous with quality Italian cuisine. It should be recognizable from the first local Pelino project, Pelino’s Pasta. The King Avenue restaurant has earned accolades and designations on local top-10 lists for its multi-course Italian meals built from scratch with ingredients imported from Italy.

The Pelinos latest project, Piazza Pelino made its Short North debut near the end of 2023. Piazza is just one letter away from “pizza,” so it might be easy to get confused about the house menu. It’s not, in any way, a pizza place. Piazza Pelino does serve, however, sandwiches and gelato. It also hosts a nicely appointed shopping scene with imported goods that include pasta, confections and a large selection of wine. At base, the stop hosts an opportunity to participate in the Pelino experience as a more casual consumer. Plus, it’s unapologetically cute and cheery; with its colorful umbrella ceiling and a few seats for those who linger.

To be clear, when it comes to the sandwiches, the scratch-made focaccia is the star. The bread is made fresh daily from imported ingredients, including imported flour. Local sandwich sensibilities often focus on quantity of fillings, and that’s not the standard you’ll want to apply here. The eatery is a happy place for bread heads who prioritize quality and freshness in focaccia. The sandwich fillings are there to add intrigue and variety.

large flats of focaccia bread sit on cooling racks — Focaccia from Piazza Pelino

So let’s talk focaccia. The house version yields an exemplary chewy, flat bread with an appealing tenderness. It’s baked thick enough to provide a firm presence with its rolling golden surface. In the Della Casa ($16.25), the focaccia is first paired with a substantial coat of pesto that hits deliciously hard with its fragrant basil elements. It makes a strong foundation for thin slices of savory, salty prosciutto and mild and creamy stracciatella. The Prosciutto boasts a “DOP” moniker. The acronym stands for Denominazione d’Origine Protetta, which essentially translates as a protected designate of origin – that’s a quality control measure for foods from Italy, and functions like an authenticator. You’ll find that DOP notation on several items at Pelinos.

A sandwich is constructed with one slide of bread slathered in a green pesto and the other with a white, creamy cheese, a pile of prosciutto sits next to it

A thick focaccia sandwich wrapped in paper with an umbrella and the name Piazza Pelino — Della Casa

Meanwhile, the Il Top (that’s a “I” and “L,” not roman numeral “2,” $15.25) starts with the same winning bread as a foundation. Inside it integrates a buttery pistachio element, both in the from of pesto and chips. There’s also slices of mortadella, a thin cut cured Italian lunch meat, and more winning stracciatella. In this case, the pistachio and stracciatella elements take on dominant roles, adding a defining richness to the combo.

For a meat-free sandwich, Piazza Pelino’s menu offers a Pesto Rosso, a combo that includes roasted peppers and DOP mozzarella. Or, you could just head straight to the house-made, small batch gelato. No meat in there. Instead, the whirling canisters offer up characteristically dense, smooth creaminess for which the dessert is well known. Made with Snowville Creamery milk, buy-in starts at $5.95 with two scoops that will fill the cup, edge-to-edge and then arch up to a rounded mountain top. Alternating a chocolate coffee combo keeps both flavors delightfully intense.