Donatos Pizza (Dublin, High Street)

• 6 S. High Street
• Dublin, OH 43017
• (614) 793-1100
• Website
• Menu

We loved the Columbus Zoo.  It was a long, hot day, but it was so worth it.

Five and a half hours after we started on our trek, we were back in the car and heading back towards our hotel in Dublin.  We have friends that live in the area and talked about meeting them for dinner, but we were hot and the kids wanted to swim, so we made plans to meet for lunch the next day instead.

We still needed to do something for dinner.  Neither of us wanted to sit down with cranky kids, so we decided on pizza.  In a move totally unlike me, I didn’t do much homework so I didn’t know what was in the area.  I did a Google search and came up with a chain that I had never heard of that got pretty good reviews.  Since I didn’t have a lot of time to waste looking for true local places, I went with the chain that was new to me.

I picked Donatos Pizza in Historic District of Dublin right near the corner of High Street and Bridge Street.  The historic district is the original downtown of the village of Dublin and features some buildings that are well over a hundred years old.  Newer buildings have been built to seamlessly fit into the historic look.  None of the buildings look like a typical chain restaurant including the Dominos Pizza across the street which has the same brick facade and muted signage as the rest of the shops in the area.  Donatos has just small sign hanging above the door to mark it’s place in this well preserved downtown.

Donatos Pizza is a chain and I don’t usually do chains while traveling, but, as I mentioned, it’s a chain I haven’t had before so we gave it a shot.  The pizza chain got it’s start in 1963 when the founder of the chain bought the original Donatos Pizza which still stands on Thurman Avenue in Columbus.  At one point, they sold to McDonalds when the fast food burger chain was trying to get in the pizza game right before the turn of the century.  That lasted about four years before the founder and his daughter bought a majority share back.  The chain has roughly 200 locations in eight states.  Michigan is not one of those states.  The closest store to Kalamazoo would be in either Lima, OH or Indianapolis, IN.

Parking in this part of Dublin is mostly street parking and we were lucky enough to find one just down the street from the store.  I left everyone else in the car and went in to pick up my order which I had placed on their website while sitting in the parking lot at the zoo.  Even without the app, website ordering from my phone was super easy.

The restaurant is set up with a large order counter right as you walk in the door.  In this way, Donatos looks like any other carry-out pizza joint.  There are two cash registers behind a counter which then has an open window in to the kitchen.  Most of my order was waiting for me underneath the warmers when I walked in.

I say, “most of my order” because there was only two boxes and there should have been three.  I asked about the cinnamon bread which wasn’t there.  The clerk looked at the ticket and realized they missed it.  They started making it and took the cost off my bill leaving me at a little over $22 for the two medium pizzas.

While I was waiting, I took a seat in the small dining room in the front of the space.  I’m guessing this is not normal at most Donatos locations, but this was actually a really nice space for what is billed as a carry-out chain.  The space continues the hardwood floors and dark walls with soft lighting from the order counter.  This sleek, modern feeling space fits in really well with the historic feeling features of the building.

It took about five minutes for the cinnamon bread to be boxed up and handed to me with the rest of my order.  I asked the employee for a couple of paper plates because we were going to be eating in the hotel room and she grabbed a stack along with some napkins and plasticware.

I ordered two pizzas with the intention of snacking on pizza all night.  We were eating dinner around 3:30, so it was a little early for us to be done for the night.

The first pizza I ordered was a medium thin crust pepperoni.  This is kind of the pizza they’re famous for. The pile on the pepperoni leaving very little space on the top of the pizza that is not covered.  The thin crust not the cracker thin crust we really like, but still much, much thinner than the typical carry-out.  The sauce hit a little bit of a bite to it.  It was a sweetness mixed in with a little bit of spiciness.  L and I worked on this pizza and between the two of us, we ate all but a few pieces.

The second pizza I ordered for B and J was a medium Serious Cheese.  This pizza is topped with smoked Wisconsin Provoline cheese.  I’m becoming a big fan of a mixture of cheese on cheese pizzas and that’s the only place this pizza missed out for me.  It was really delicious with the focus placed on the sauce which was much more pronounced without the pepperoni.  J and B ate about half of this one leaving me a little bit to snack on later.

I also ordered the Cinnamon Bread for dessert.  The “fresh, artisan pull apart bread” is topped with cinnamon sugar and streusel topping then drizzled with vanilla icing.  This dessert pizza is done by a lot of pizza chains and they all taste pretty much the same.  The thing that really worked for this one is we got it hot and it was still hot when we got back to our hotel room.  It was just like getting a cinnamon roll right out of the oven.

Donatos Pizza was better than I expected it to be.  I like that the crust is something different, but it’s still a little chewier than I like.  I like thin crust that is cracker thin and crunchy around the edges.  This one is still better than most carry-out pizza pizza joints and it’s one I would keep going back to if there was one near us.