Cheese Board Pizza: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Cheese Board Pizza is a vegetarian pizzeria in Berkeley, run by the worker-owned Cheese Board Collective. The pizzeria never puts meat on a pie, and the site says so more than once: “always meat-free.” You’ll find it at 1512 Shattuck Avenue, two doors south of the collective’s cheese shop and bakery, and the line often stretches down the block.

The format is the draw. The kitchen makes one pizza each day, plus one salad, and you eat what the day brings. The recipe has stayed the same since 1985, when the workers began serving a single vegetarian pizza on Friday nights. They bake a thin sourdough crust and top it with organic produce and cheeses picked from the shop next door. The first week of November gives a sense of the range. Tuesday brings baby spinach, red onion, feta, and mozzarella. Thursday brings marinated artichoke, Caciocavallo, and arugula. Friday’s pie uses four cheeses and three kinds of onion with basil and pine nut pesto. Saturday brings cremini mushrooms, toasted garlic, and Parmesan.

A slice costs $3.25, a half pizza $13, and a whole pie $26, all plus tax. A salad costs $7, roasted garlic $2.50, and a cookie $3.50. Soft serve costs $5.75, and drinks include kombucha, soda, beer, cider, and wine by the glass or bottle. Service is walk-up only, so you order at the counter and find a seat. The pizzeria takes no online orders and doesn’t deliver. It accepts phone orders only for six or more whole pizzas.

Cheese and eggs appear on the menu, so I placed it in the 100 percent vegetarian tier and not the vegan one. A vegan pie is available as a whole pizza only, at $28, and the kitchen makes it with NUMU, a coconut-oil-based, non-dairy cheese. The collective warns that it makes the vegan pizza in a kitchen full of dairy, so it can’t promise zero contamination. Ask a worker to start it before you join the line. A gluten-friendly crust costs $28 as well, but it shares space with gluten, so it isn’t safe for celiac disease.

If rennet matters to you, the site publishes a milk and rennet list for the pizza cheeses. Strict vegetarians who avoid animal rennet can read it before ordering. The kitchen’s allergy notice says it handles dairy, wheat, nuts, eggs, and other allergens.

Live music is part of both lunch and dinner service, and a musicians’ schedule is online. The Cheese Board opened as a cheese store in 1967 and has been a collective since 1971, after the original owners sold the cheese store to its employees. The bakery and cheese counter next door carry nearly 400 cheeses, plus an espresso bar and fresh bread, and sell parbaked pizzas you can finish at home. Bake them at 400 degrees for five to eight minutes.

The pizzeria opens Tuesday through Saturday for lunch from 11:30am to 2:30pm. It also serves dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 4:30pm to 8pm. It’s closed Sunday and Monday. Call 510-549-3183 with questions. Get there early for lunch, and order the pizza of the day.