Mikey's Late Night Slice is opening its 12th location on Columbus' far north side, bringing its New York-style slices, a full bar, and alcohol-spiked slushies to a shop at 2136 Ikea Way starting at 4 p.m. on Aug. 28. The Polaris shop will stay open until 1 a.m. that first night, and the first 100 customers through the door will walk away with free t-shirts and slice cards.
The Polaris opening marks the pizzeria's third new shop of 2026, following stops in Dayton and Grandview Heights earlier this year, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The chain now has shops spread across Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, a footprint that has grown considerably since founder Mike “Mikey” Sorboro opened the original location in 2009. Sorboro got his start driving pedicabs through the Short North in 2008, where late-night bar patrons kept asking him where they could find pizza after last call, according to Entrepreneurs of Columbus. He used his pedicab earnings to rent a 140-square-foot former storage shack in his apartment parking lot for $300 a month and bought his first equipment from there.
Opening Week Deals and Hours
Opening week at the Polaris shop will run on a rotating schedule, per the Dispatch's reporting. The shop is set to be open from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Aug. 29, then 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Aug. 30, before another round of extended hours on Sept. 3 and Sept. 4, and additional daytime hours on Sept. 6. Throughout the stretch, the pizzeria will lean on its established formula of pizza by the slice and by the pie, happy-hour deals, and date-night specials.
One headline offer is the “Dysfunctional Family Deal,” which bundles a whole pie, Stix, four beers and four shots for $60. The Polaris location will also feature a full bar, alcohol-spiked “Lushies” slushies, and what the Dispatch describes as a saucy bar stocked with the chain's full lineup of dipping sauces. That sauce lineup traces back to the brand's early days in the Short North shack, where a condiment now branded “Unicorn Sauce” was originally sold under a far cruder name until 2015, when company leadership rebranded it to prepare for retail distribution in regional grocery stores, according to PMQ Pizza. The rename reportedly triggered strong pushback from longtime fans attached to the original branding.
A Cult Menu Meets a Suburban Retail Corridor
The Polaris shop sits inside The Galaxy at Polaris commercial development, a deal brokered by Central Ohio commercial real estate firm Capitol Equities, which also handled the chain's Dayton location, according to Capitol Equities. That Dayton shop opened in January at 503 E. First St. in the city's Water Street District, across from Day Air Ballpark, in a building that formerly housed Local Cantina, per the Downtown Dayton Partnership. Just weeks before the Polaris announcement, the chain also opened its 11th location on July 31 at 1312 Grandview Ave in Grandview Heights, a neighborhood Mikey's had previously called home, according to 614NOW.
The rapid pace of openings underscores how far the brand has traveled from its parking-lot origins into high-traffic development corridors, a shift also visible in its 2024 partnership with hospitality company Rise Brands to open pizza shops inside Pins Mechanical Co. entertainment venues at Dublin's Bridge Park and Easton Town Center, replacing the company's former Weenie Wonder hot dog concepts. Mikey's Late Night Slice was built out by Sorboro alongside Chief Executive Officer Bryce Ungerott and Chief Creative Officer Jason Biundo, according to the company's own leadership page. The chain first tested its model outside Central Ohio in March 2019, opening a full-service pizzeria in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood at 2014 Elm St., a location Hoodline covered shortly after it debuted.
New York Slices in Columbus-Style Territory
Mikey's has carved out a distinct identity in a region historically known for square-cut tavern pizza. Traditional Columbus-style pizza, made popular by chains like Donatos and Massey's since the 1950s, is defined by thin crust, square party cuts, and edge-to-edge toppings, according to Experience Columbus. Mikey's instead sticks to large, foldable, New York-style triangle slices, a format that has become part of its late-night, counter-culture appeal alongside menu novelties like the Cheezus Crust, a grilled-cheese-style pie made by melting American cheese between two whole slices of pizza, first dreamed up during slow hours at the original Short North shack.
