After more than six weeks and 100,000 votes, Northern Indiana has found its best pizza place – the Wooden Peel of Marshall County, which beat out The Café at the Bowling Alley. The Northern Indiana Pizza Wars finished Monday after kicking off in May with over 50 pizza restaurants across the region. In the final round, only 34 votes separated the two restaurants. Iechyd Da of Elkhart also won a critics’ choice award, given by food critic Kate Silver. Northern Indiana Pizza Wars is a joint initiative of the Northern Indiana Tourism Development Commission and its member convention and visitors bureaus in Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Marshall, Kosciusko, Elkhart and LaGrange counties. The bracket-style Pizza Wars competition was created as a way of driving tourism to each of the seven counties. Using the results of the competition, the NITDC will create a Pizza Trail map that guides visitors to each of the county winners, according to the commission’s announcement Monday.
