Hello again, 412A Brunswick Street. I’m old enough to remember when this off-Broadway Fitzroy dining room was, briefly, The Brix, a high-concept restaurant of baby veg and edible flowers with a showy, $5000 Mooi pig table at the entrance.

The Brix flared briefly before replaced by Hammer and Tong, which became Fitzroy’s favourite brunch spot. More recently it was Nomada Food & Wine, which closed early this year to be replaced recently by… Deep End, a pizza joint.

Not just any old pizza place but a purveyor of regional US specialties. These include thin-crust NY-style with interesting toppings like hazelnut pesto and goat’s cheese, and whole clams with chilli and bacon. There’s also Detroit pan pizza with its focaccia-like base and flavours of hot salami (’nduja) with confit garlic, and ‘piney brussels’ – sprouts, pine mushrooms, three cheeses and garlic sauce.

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I’m here with my Michigander friend who tells me Detroit pizzas were definitely not a thing growing up there. But Chicago deep-dish? He remembers them fondly from childhood.

Fortunately there are three to choose from on Deep End’s menu ($42-$50). If they take your fancy you need to order them as soon as you sit down because each takes half an hour to prepare. When they arrive you’ll understand why.

Not so much pizza as pie, they’re so deeply layered with ingredients – mostly mozzarella and tomato sugo, but also pepperoni, and sausage, mushroom and capsicum – that they need all that time to cook through.

In the meantime, we order some entrées from a list that plays popular – chicken wings, cheese and garlic focaccia – but also offers more interesting takes such as the chicken liver parfait brulée (a Heston Blumenthal favourite) and whipped taleggio.

Taleggio is a funky, gooey cheese from the Italian alps that’s whipped here to the consistency of caramel, cut through with the sweet acid bite of charred spring onion, the crunch of crushed pistachios and served with the facility of focaccia toast soldiers. If you like stinky soft cheeses – and I do – then this is the ultimate comfort food.

The parfait is more granular and rustic than expected but ruddy in colour, robust in flavour and quite fun to eat because you have to crack the glass ceiling of burnt sugar to get to it. Toffee and pâté? Don’t knock it till you try it.

The bar list gives beers top billing – 13 regular brews and two alcohol-free – while its handful of cocktails are twists on classics such as the Diane, a Cuba libre with smoked cola, and the margarita-adjacent Artemis. Wines are low-fi though the list is small and unambitious. That said, a naturally fermented Site pinot gris from Benalla works well with pizza and quite cheap at $11 a (generous) glass.

The deep-dish pie arrives. It’s daunting. The first slice, which requires two hands to lift, is nourishing and novel. Maximum tomato and cheese, which is fine for one slice but the second becomes monotonous and the third defeats us.

It’s a madly calorific indulgence that would be more fun, I think, with more people. Bring the whole gang. That way you can sample some of the starters too, and perhaps one of the other pizza styles. Which you absolutely should.

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