This Award-Winning Pizza Chef Made An Epic 99-Cheese Pizza

They told him it was impossible, that it was too Gouda to be true. But he did it. Johnny Di Francesco, acclaimed, award-winning pizza-maker, created a 99-cheese pizza, inspired by the fictional  Novantanove Formaggio pizza eaten by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It sounds like a bit much, but tasters at The Guardian give the ultra-cheesy masterpiece two grease-covered thumbs up. The pizza is available at famed Melbourne's 400 Gradi. 

"I tried six different times before I got the right texture and the right flavors. I quickly learned that you had to melt down the cheeses so that you wouldn't get stringiness," he told ABC News. "You had to use the right cheeses. For example, you couldn't melt down mozzarella because the curds break down."

The base of the pizza is created with a supreme blend of 94 carefully-selected cheeses — including  Taleggio, aged Cheddar, double-cream Brie, pecorino, and gorgonzola — that were combined and melted down to become a single block of cheese. The pizza is then topped with delicious gobs of fior di latte, buffalo mozzarella, goat cheese, ricotta, and shaved raspadura.

The Guardian's review calls the pizza "fantastic." "Di Francesco has created a balanced and surprisingly nuanced pizza. It sounds like a supersized hot mess, the kind of novelty cuisine you might see on a menu at a suburban pizza and ribs joint, but it is anything but."