Artisan pizza in the Delta. It's worth the drive

Marisol Doyle took some well-deserved time off recently, which gave her an opportunity to reflect on the first six months of being the owner of Leña Pizza and Bagels in Cleveland.

What she discovered is that the new artisan pizza venue in the heart of the Mississippi Delta is going very well.

Leña opened to much fanfare in the spring along historic Cotton Row in downtown Cleveland. Since then, the restaurant has been full virtually every day.

Born and raised in Mexico, Doyle didn't work with dough until starting a bagel company a few years ago. She also studied at the prestigious Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana in Napoli, Italy, and completed a stage at Scuola di Pizzaiolo outside Naples.

Why did 1,200 people apply to work here? See what chef says is best to order at Eudora's, a new restaurant in The District at Eastover

Southern meets Creole in Vicksburg: This MS restaurant serves Southern and Creole cuisine and the main ingredient is love

"We have worked every day for six months and then six months before that to get ready to open. So, we thought now was a good time to recharge our batteries a little bit," said Doyle, who reopened the restaurant this past weekend. With more than two decades in the restaurant industry, this is her first brick and mortar location.

She met her husband Rory Doyle in Arizona and they moved to Cleveland because of an opportunity for him to work at Delta State University. While he is associated with the restaurant and helps with many facets including social media, Doyle is a freelance visual journalist.

"I knew nothing about Mississippi at the time except that there was Delta State and the river was close by," Marisol Doyle said. "We eventually grew to love Cleveland. It's small enough that you get to know people, and it has a really cool downtown. We made friends, and we have stayed."

Doyle has worked in restaurants much of her professional life and managed a local eatery in Cleveland. She said she "burned out" there after 10 years and began looking for something else.

"I swore I would never get back in the restaurant business again," she said. "And here I am. A Mexican in the Delta doing Neopolitan Mexican-style pizza."

Between burnout and Leña, she said she "dabbled a little bit with bagels" with a friend at the Cleveland Farmer's Market. That turned into a business in Clarksdale for about a year that focused on coffee and bagels and helped local teens learn how to get into the workforce as an economic education and development project.

After a family emergency drew her friend to Vermont, Marisol Doyle missed working and customer interaction. The Doyles put their heads together and decided to go out on a limb and try pizza in downtown Cleveland.

"I went to Naples to train just to see if that was something I could do and get a feel for that type of pizza," she said. "I love my teacher there because he was so passionate and that kind of rubbed off on me. I just fell in love with this. I just have a real passion for this, the process of this. It's really a labor of love at this point."

Doyle said her favorite pizza at the restaurant is appropriately named "Pepperory," after her husband. After that, she said she has an authentic margherita pizza and a Mexican-styled pizza that she developed on her own. Otherwise, she said she has many favorites and rotates the menu on a regular basis.

When she first opened, she was making just 30 pizzas a day and increased to 50 and 80 and 100 to keep up with demand. Now she said the restaurant is full almost all the time.

"It has been very well received, and we could not be happier," Marisol Doyle said. "We continuously have people in the restaurant from Greenwood, Greenville, Oxford, Memphis, Jackson and all over. The word of mouth has been fantastic. We are very grateful for everything we have."

So, a little bit of time off was welcome for the Doyles, but while in Italy, they also took the opportunity to visit some of the most famous pizza establishments in the nation.

"With fresh eyes, we are able to really get a good look and bring more ideas home that we can use," she said. "We are going to try and work on a few new things."

One of the new things she wants to try is fried pizza.

That seems like a natural fit for Mississippi and the Delta.

Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or at 601-573-2952. You can follow him on Twitter @GreenOkra1.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect the name of the owner and the establishment.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Artisan pizza in Cleveland MS see where