Ledo Restaurant

Pizzas are round. It’s one of the few immutable truths out there, an anchor of reality. Of course pizzas are round — just like the sky is blue and grass is green.

But what if that wasn’t true? What if pizza could be delicious, affordable and, most notably, rectangular? I’m telling you, friends: It’s true and it’s right under your noses. The Original Ledo Restaurant, located in the sprawling collection of buildings we call College Park, was founded back in 1955, when pizza was something of a fad and most people were using — gasp — rectangular pizza pans. However, some scheming pizza chef, twirling his stereotypical mustache, probably decided that if pizzas were cut into a circle, they would look bigger while actually being smaller. Thus the round pizza was born and the rectangular pizza was lost to oblivion, fading away into the floury sands of time.

Or it would have been, if not for the Marcos and their Ledo Restaurant. Originally operating out of Adelphi and recently relocating here in College Park in 2010, Ledo Restaurant is committed to filling our stomachs with tasty rectangular pizza. The cheese is thick, the sauce is sweet, and the crust is light and flaky. You can get the usual assorted toppings, but the most famous is Ledo’s massive pepperoni slices — one is all you need for a single slice. That’s another unique element of Ledo’s pizza: The slices are small and rectangular, which really means you can fool yourself into eating a lot by saying “these pieces are much smaller than regular pizza, so I’ll just help myself to a ninth slice.”

The prices are actually quite affordable if you bring some friends. A few people can share a pizza easily, cutting it down to only six or seven bucks a person if you do your math right. Ledo also offers a variety of other Italian-inspired foods, but honestly, I’ve only ever had the pizza. It’s that good.

Ledo’s pizza (as well as the similarly named chain of restaurants) is an essential element of this state, deserving to stand up there with crabs, Old Bay and Edgar Allan Poe (not to mention Poe, the Ravens’ mascot). So if you and your friends (or just you, I won’t judge) are looking for some delicious pizza that’s not afraid to be different, you should check out The Original Ledo Restaurant and enjoy the excellent taste of the rectangle.

This piece is part of the diversions section’s Friday package on College Park’s best pizza.