New Columbus restaurant pushing hard toward its opening
A new Columbus restaurant that will serve up a variety of pizzas, burgers, calzones and wings, with more than 100 beers on tap to wash it all down, is about midway through its construction.
Old Chicago Pizza & Taproom, which is being constructed at 6581 Whittlesey Blvd., in the Columbus Park Crossing shopping and dining area of the city, is pushing toward an opening shortly into the college and NFL football seasons, Dhruv Patel, a franchise partner in Shiv Restaurant Management, said Monday.
“We’re almost on schedule, but it’s still going to be sometime in October,” he said, noting that hiring of employees for the 6,738-square-foot restaurant should begin a few weeks before the opening.
Shiv Restaurant Management is spending $1,768,300 on construction alone of Old Chicago Pizza & Taproom, which dates to 1976, but is now owned and operated with a mix of company and franchise locations — more than 100 in 22 states — by CraftWorks Restaurants & Breweries Inc., which has corporate offices in Broomfield, Colo., and Chattanooga, Tenn.
“We’ll just have to see how the Columbus market does,” Patel said when asked about his expectations for the restaurant, which will enter a Columbus market that has experienced rapid growth in new food establishments in recent years, from downtown to the city’s north side.
The restaurant, which will be tucked between a longtime Mexican restaurant called El Carrizo and a new Fazoli’s Italian eatery, and across from a new Academy Sports and Outdoors, should fare well, Patel believes.
“Seeing a big retailer like Academy coming in, that’s always good for the area,” he said. “That brings in people from out of town and it has a wide range of people.”
The Old Chicago Pizza menu includes a variety of pizzas with names that include Chicago 7, Double Deckeroni, Hawaiian, Meat Me, The Classic, Veggie 7, Classic Margherita, Italian Grinder, Steak and Beer Cheese, Thai Pie and Tuscan Chicken with Spinach.
The restaurant chain also offers more than 110 craft beers and is known for its “World Beer Tour” that rewards customers who sample the array of brew. More than 30 of the craft beers are on tap.