Hungry Bear

Hungry Bear is a new pizza place in town and they offered free pizza to all and a second free furphy for me.

But we paid for the arancini and the first Furphy which was $6.50. The arancini was on the small side and was $7. The last time we bought this was at the End of year run party and they were bigger balls. These were tiny.

Salt

Furphy

Arancini

The place is small and the old Chillipadi used to be there. I guess Chillipadi couldn't afford the fees and they left shop. Now Hungry Bear takes place. The owner is a lovely lady and her husband loves drinking beer. They really do know their beer.

The free pizza I had was good but tiny. I guess they wanted to do guilt free eating as too many people are overweight. It was Christmas ham with pineapple. Normally after 5pm it would be $5. This sized pizza is normally $14. Their pizzas take 90 seconds to make and the ingredients are fresh. All the ingredients are already prepared. All they need to do is put it in the quick oven which tells the server when the pizza is done.

I have had Furphy before and enjoyed it. This was not too bad and they had some fruity notes in there.

If you are around and are up for a drink come on by. I hope that they are featured as a bonus offer in the Entertainment book. 

Crust pizza bar

Crust Pizza bar is a chain store in Australia. And they are featured in the Entertainment book for 25% off the total bill for takeaway and dine in. Excludes online offers.

Here I went to the one in Lonsdale st and it is smallish. They weren't very busy as it was a warm night.

According to their claims of the pizzas take ten minutes to make- mine took a little longer as it was seafood. It was $14 with the Entertainment book voucher. And they forgot to apply the discount. It took them a little while to remember and when they did they gave me a free fanta.

But the seafood pizza was very nice. It didn't have too much sauce which I liked and it had a lot of fresh seafood. The base was just perfect.

Do come by for your pizzas and remember to buy the book off us as you'll save lots when you go out.

Oskar Pizza

Oskar Pizza is in North Melbourne right outside a tram line. Here they are known for the best Italian pizzas and they have been following me for some time on Instagram.

It was when Metro had decided on the replacement bus service that I had decided to give it a shot. I didn't want the inconvience of having to take a train, then a bus and then another bus. Besides North Melbourne station is about 5-10 minute walk away from here

Here the place is small and intimate and so is their menu. This is good in a way as they can just focus well on a few things and do really well with them. We didn't mind the wait as the pizza turned out really good. Really good pizza takes a while to make. Some people complained but most enjoyed their food including us. Our pizza took twenty minutes to make.

Our pizza was a small roast pumpkin pizza ($17.50) with balsamic vinegar in it as well as cheese and onion. The balsamic vinegar was very subtle which we liked and there was lots of garlic in there. The base was a little bit doughy but we did not mind one bit. At least the vegetables were fresh and we saw it go into the oven.

Then for dessert we had two scoops of Fritz's gelato for $10. Fritz have just won the best award for their ice cream hence this was well worth our money. Here it came in a small but cool looking glass which made the dessert look very tantalising. We would have ordered the Nutella pizza but we were happy with ice cream. We chose the pistachio and the macadamia flavours and they worked well together like a marriage made in heaven.

Rating: 15/20- good wish more people knew about this place.

The Imperial

I have walked past The Imperial several times and had always wanted to give this a go. So when our business bought the gift card from the Age for me and they were on the list. But they always seemed so expensive and out of the way for me.

But I have say that for a bar the vibe is really good. I loved watching the staff make the drinks for the birthday girl and her friends. You order and pay at the counter and you collect the menu yourself to peruse. Here they don't do a lot of vegetarian fare but they specialise in pizza fare. Almost all of their pizza is $10 which makes it a good place for some Mundo Lingo fare.

Service here was a bit slow and the lady at the bar was disinterested in serving customers. The guys were just fine.

Here I had their vegetarian pasta ($19) which was nice but bland.Some pesto sauce would be lovely. But the vegetables were great and the plate made it a good hearty pub meal. It was bowtie pasta which makes it a good summers day meal with wine or the fat burning tea which you can buy from Healthy International students.

Rating: 14/20- love the food but hated the disinterested service.

Toto's via Menulog

Note this is the new Toto's in South Melbourne, not the original one.
RNIS was given a $20 voucher and the $15 was from RUSU for their crafternoon food.

It's Friday and its Crafternoon.  The queer collective at RUSU holds these crafternoon sessions as a way of unwinding before the weekend. We're tired and crosstitching or drawing or whatever that is and we can't stop for food. So of course what do we do best as students? Order online of course.

Now online there are thousands of places to choose from and you can pick whatever you like and pay whichever way you want whether by cash, card or Paypal.

Here we chose Toto's as the safest bet and when we had heard that they have opened a new store in South Melbourne we thought we would give it a go. The delivery was late on a Friday night and we waited about half an hour for it. But when it came all was good and we dug in.

The meatlovers loved their meat pizza as it was devoured in no time.  But the feta vegetarian one ($16) had lots of cheese and not much vegetables.  The base was a bit thin for my liking. But luckily I had a chicken salad as well.

Next time the safest bet is don't order on a Friday night and go out for dinner instead. But many thanks to RUSU and Menulog for the voucher and the pizzas.