A well-known Covington pizzeria is soon to cross the river.
Mad Anthony’s Pizza, one of the most popular stalls in the food hall Covington Yard, is expanding to Cincinnati by taking over the former Voodoo Brewing space in the Central Business District. The new location will open Friday, May 29, with the intent of bringing a new quality late-night dining option to Cincinnati’s urban core.
The business stands out compared to other, similar pizzerias for its focus on fresh ingredients and the lack of additives like added sugars or artificial dyes. Keeping things natural is important to co-owners Brandon Martin, Anthony Notaro and Tim Beard.
“Our red sauce is Anthony’s grandmother’s, straight off the boat from Italy. Making it properly really comes down to time and ingredients, and we have a strong focus on taking the time to do it right. If it’s worth doing right once, it’s worth doing every single time,” Martin said. “We mirepoix the sauce, we don’t add any sugar, obviously, there’s no cellulose in our cheese. We don’t cut corners in any way that we can, and it leaves our pizza feeling surprisingly light and filling.”
It’s been a long journey for the three to open their own brick-and-mortar. Martin and Notaro went to Xavier University together, but initially went their separate ways; Martin had short stints in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, while Notaro hightailed it to Arizona.
Both ended up making their way back to the Queen City and got jobs at Taft’s Ale House, where they met Beard. The three became fast friends, and several pop-ups from the trio—who titled themselves Starving Artist Hospitality, as a cheeky nod to their past as musicians or stage production designers—sprouted up around the city across the past half-decade, with the goal of eventually opening a brick-and-mortar.
While Martin was working as general manager of Oakley Greens, he heard that a spot for a food stall was opening up at their sister location, Covington Yard. After the trio got together and sorted out their concept and their price point, Mad Anthony’s opened for business in March 2025. Over time, they added more than just pizza: sandwiches, wings, salads and fried appetizers like mozzarella sticks line the menu.
Their full location will have all that and more—while the menu will be expanded, the most obvious difference is their 24 taps filled with beer, wine and cocktails. Soon, Martin will leverage his bartending experience to create a menu of Italian sodas with different house-made syrups, noting the necessity for non-alcoholic alternatives in today’s current dining scene. It’s all part of their goal to fill a hole in the market in downtown Cincinnati.
“There’s not really a whole lot of pizza where we’re at. Obviously, you can go up to OTR and there’s a few spots up there, but as far as the Central Business District, it’s us and the giant chains that, you know, don’t serve the quality of product that business people and residents are really looking for. We’re hoping we can make our mark and be able to stand between a taco place and a burger place as the pizza place,” Martin jokingly said, in reference to the building’s proximity to Taqueria Mercado and Arnold’s Bar and Grill.
While their stall in Covington Yard is “very close geographically as the bird flies” to their new location, both locations will shoot for different goals, as Martin said the two will “serve pretty drastically different client bases.”
“The benefit of Covington Yard is that people are going to be there regardless to watch the game and eat. So it was a great way for us to get started. We built up a fanbase, and were fortunate enough that part of the fanbase were investors looking to put a pizza place in Cincinnati,” he said. “This location is a completely different animal. We’re catering to a different audience with the same product … there’s not a reason that people are just going to be in this space, no matter what. We have to give them a reason to be here.”
Part of that comes down to talking to their fellow neighboring businesses.
“I’ve already been connecting with some of the other businesses around, trying to figure out what a bar crawl looks like, or how do we convey to tourists and suburban folks that downtown is not actually that scary,” Martin said. “We definitely approach it with a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ mentality.”
While Martin has big dreams for the trio’s future, he’s not losing sight of what comes next.
“Long term, we want to have a couple of different concepts across the area, while making sure we’re contributing to the food scene here and honoring it and uplifting it in a way that’s good for both us and the city, and the community that invites us into it,” Martin said. “We’re really excited to introduce ourselves to the culinary scene here in Cincinnati, which I think is drastically underrated. But right now, it’s all about getting this place open and making really good pizza.”
The downtown location of Mad Anthony’s Pizza opens Friday, May 29, at 120 E. 8th Street. For more information, visit their Instagram page.
