Wayfarer Tavern

The Story

USA Today just named Wayfarer Tavern one of the best pizzas in America. That's a real distinction and the pizza earns it. It also undersells the place.

Wayfarer opened in 2025 at 635 Sixth Ave in Dayton, Kentucky, in a building that went up in 1884 and has been a masonic lodge, a post office, and city hall for the town. Owner Mike Dew is a Northern Kentucky native who spent years chasing pizza styles around the country and abroad, then spent more years testing recipes at monthly pizza parties in his own house before he ever opened a door. What came out of that is a hybrid: thin East Coast bar crust, a Detroit-style caramelized cheese edge, cut into small Midwest tavern squares. Mark Knight runs the kitchen with Jessie Hensley as sous chef.

I went on a Thursday afternoon, a few days into a national publicity spike. My server, Maddy, said they got slammed the Saturday after the article ran and that it hasn't really let up, but it wasn't too bad when I was there and she was a wonderful host and great at answering questions I had.

The Vibe

You come in the front door and the bar is immediately to your right, a deep dark-wood bar with a serious backbar and mosaic tile underfoot. A wall separates the bar room from the raised dining area to the left, with an arched passage cut through it. The brick around that arch is left exposed and unfinished, original masonry framed against plain white plaster. Somebody decided exactly where to stop the demolition, and they were right.

Green gingham on every table. Bentwood chairs. Green banker's-lamp sconces, a band of black-and-gold floral wallpaper running the ceiling line, a wooden propeller mounted on the dining room wall, a framed pen-and-ink drawing of the building itself. Acoustic panels on the ceiling in both rooms, which is not something a pizza place normally spends money on and tells you they thought about whether you'd be able to hear the person across the table.

The Food

The wagyu beef carpaccio is the dish I did not see coming. Shaved eye of round fanned across an enamel-rimmed oval platter, chipotle aioli striped over the top, capers and diced peppadew scattered, fine parmesan dusted across the whole thing, dressed arugula piled in the center. Shallot, capers, and the peppadew brine all doing acid work against the fat of the beef and the aioli. It got better the further into it I got. I'd come here just for this. I'd drive an hour for it, and it's a $19 appetizer at a place the country calls a pizza joint.

Then the pizza, and this is where it gets interesting, because the two pies I ordered have almost nothing in common except the crust under them.

The Hatch Chili Cheeseburger is a seasonal. Hatch green chiles, ground beef, onion, salsa doña, confit garlic cream white sauce, five-cheese blend. The salsa doña goes on after the bake in wide zigzags and it builds. I had a bead of sweat on my forehead by the end and never wanted to stop. I've had a lot of pizza and I have never had anything like it. Calibrate accordingly: my wife, who does not eat spicy food, took a bite of the leftovers at home without knowing what she was getting into and the heat throat-punched her.

The Meatwad started as a seasonal too and got popular enough to earn a permanent slot, which is a promotion the customers handed out before any national list noticed. It reads traditional Italian with a meatball twist. Split house-made meatballs, peppadew, whipped ricotta piped in individual rosettes, basil torn over the top after the bake. The sauce is mild on purpose. The crust and the toppings do the work and the sauce is a supporting actor doing its job.

I cleared my palate between them, a few bites and a couple sips of beer, because the chile heat would have flattened anything that came after it. That's how different they are.

On the crust itself: the squares run about two inches, they don't bend at all, and the base holds dead flat. The rim is genuinely lacy and crisp where the cheese fried against the pan wall, not just dark. In fact, it is baked in one oven and then seared in another to get the desired finish. There was zero grease on either pie, which means the beef gets drained before it goes on and the cheese blend is built to brown instead of break. Most kitchens manage one of those.

The beer list is worth a look too. They had Eliot Ness on, which not many places around here carry, and every specialty pizza on the menu comes with a printed wine or beer pairing. That is not a pizza-parlor move.

The Bottom Line

If you asked me which as my favorite, I couldn't pick between the two pizzas because they were so different and good in their own way. I will say that I probably won't order either one again immediately because there are eight more on that menu and a raw bar and a Monday oyster night and a seasonal list that turns over. That's the actual verdict. I finished lunch already planning the next trip, and I'm bringing the family so we can try three more.

The national list sent people here for the pizza. Go for the pizza. Then look at the rest of the menu and notice that the pizza might be the least surprising thing on it. Worth the drive, and I'm making it again soon.