Di Fara’s Pizza Brooklyn
I have mixed feelings about Di Fara's and have put off writing about it for a while. It's considered an excellent (if not the premier) pizzeria in NYC. I went over a year ago, days before hopping on a plane to Naples, and didn't think it was worth the hype.
I decided to go for a second time and realized that maybe my flavor centric approach towards reviewing isn't always the best way to judge a pizzeria. We took a shaky train through the green foliage and street graffiti of Brooklyn, stepped out into the summer humidity and found ourselves at the end of an hour long wait. We waited. An hour turned into an hour and twenty minutes. I killed time by skimming the articles written about Di Fara's that lined the wall. There were too many to count and they all seemed to say pretty much the same thing: best. pizzeria. ever.
Dom Demarco, Di Fara's owner and master pizzaiolo, is an elderly man with a slight hunch whose gaze rarely rises above his work to the gawking crowd around him (that included my flashing camera, btw). Whether it's scizzoring fresh basil over bubbling cheese or sticking his ungloved hands deep into the heat of the oven Demarco makes his pies with the confidence of a sleepwalker. He performs every task as if its an extension of himself, as if rotating a pie is as natural to him as biting into an apple.