Turns out those quattro formaggi pizzas have been holding out on us all along – you can fit way more than four cheese on a pizza, and that's precisely what they're doing at the newly opened Hungry Bear Pizza Bar in Menzies Alley in the city.
They are taking one humble pizza base and capping it with blue cheese, parmesan, smoked scamorza, Buffalo mozzarella, Edam, Swisse gruyere, Meredith goats cheese, fior di latte, and Dutch maasdam. You can feel the cheese dreams beckoning. To balance out all that flavour and fat they then chuck roasted cauliflower, pickled red onion, walnuts and parsley on top and only charge you $14.90 for the pleasure.
The idea behind Hungry Bear is that they're making lighter, slightly smaller and cheaper pizzas, so your takeaway night doesn't need to be a blow out – we appreciate this flies in the face of the whole 9 cheese thing. In addition to their 15 pizzas on the menu their drinks list is sourced from independent wineries and micro-breweries, plus they make their own sugar-free soft drinks. They even have a coffee bolthole that's open from 7am. But really, they piqued our interest when they went HAM on the cheese front.
Hungry Bear, Menzies Alley (enter via Little Lonsdale Street), 211 La Trobe St, Melbourne 3000. hungrybear.com.au. Daily 11am-9pm.
Planning a rager? You may need this tried and tested list of the best late night eats in Melbourne.