Di Fara Pizza

Di Fara Pizza
1424 Ave. J, Midwood, Brooklyn

Many visitors to my fair city never leave the island of Manhattan. I myself had never set foot in Brooklyn before I moved to New York. More is the pity, more is the pity. If there's one thing I've discovered it’s that the city holds untold riches for anyone adventurous enough to ride the subway or the EL for a while, sometimes a long while. Brooklyn alone has enough fabulous food destinations to last for years, and who can plumb the untold depths of Queens and the Bronx? So much to eat and drink, so little time.

Much has been made of Di Fara's pizza on Avenue J in a little-known or visited neighborhood called Midwood: it has been called the best pizza in New York by dozens of publications. Having eaten at Roberta's in Bushwick, Lombardi's in Manhattan, and Franny's down the block, it seemed like it was about time to check out this Brooklyn legend. I was joined in my quest by Buckley, a fellow cook at Stonehome and gourmand. She and I primed the pump with a few potent potables and got on the Q train.

Part of what's so great about Di Fara's is its total lack of pretension. The place is basically a dive. It has a very unassuming facade, and looks, as Jason would say, as though it was last cleaned on the 5th of never. There were probably about 20 people waiting when we arrived at 9:20. We put in our order for a half Di Fara special, half regular pie and then began the waiting game. Happily we were prepared for the famously slow pace of production: we brought with us a six pack to suck on. The man behind the pizza is Domenic "Dom" De Marco, an elderly, stooping gentleman who has been stretching the pies for 44 years. I said to Buckley, as we watched him stretch the pie to paper thin, grate the cheese to order and slowly ladle his special tomato sauce, that if anybody worked that slowly at Stonehome, they would quickly be shown the door. Either way, he was deliberate in his movements: sprinkling cheese, drizzling extra virgin olive oil and slowly snipping bunches of fresh basil to finish each pie. I loved the fact that his every movement seemed to say "I could do this faster, but after 44 years, I'm not about to change now."

At last, an hour and twenty five minutes later, at about 10:45, our pizza was anointed with basil, cheese and olive oil, sliced and passed to us on a giant salver. It was truly an experience. The crust was paper thin, but crunchy and chewy. The rich cheese was still a bubbling, salty lava. The tomato sauce was neither too sweet nor too copious. It was the perfect New York style pie. My one criticism, if I were to have one, would be that the toppings on the "special" half were not as transcendent as the rest of the pizza, they distracted from how incredible the plain half was. Between the ambiance, the food, and the BYOB, this might be the best possible way to spend a Saturday evening. Di Fara's proves once again, food made with love just tastes better.