There's an unspoken rule in New York, or maybe any city that has the potential to be mobbed by tourists, to go out and do popular things on bad weather days. Everyone loves to go to the movies or the museum when it's raining, sure, but they aren't going to line up outside in the rain and wait an hour for some of Brooklyn's most beloved and famous pizza. And they especially aren't going to do it if it's raining and 89 degrees out. This is exactly the thought that sparked my impromptu pilgrimage to Di Fara, the highly praised pizzeria that resides on an unassuming street corner in Midwood, Brooklyn. I figured if I was going to sweat, why not up the ante and cycle down to sample this world famous slice and skip the usual line.
So what is it that makes this place so special, so revered that there's often over an hour wait just to order a pie, so beloved that a man once paid a patron $60 for just two of his slices because he didn't want to wait in line? I think Epicurious did a fair rundown of exactly what make this slice so heavenly and worth the wait. The facts are these:
Dom DeMarco, who has been serving pies at Di Fara for over 50 years, stretches the pizza dough to be near translucent, so the pie is very thin, which happens to be my preference. The flour used to make the dough comes from Italy, as do the tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella, which actually comes from DeMarco's native home town in Italy. He spreads the sauce on the dough, then added shaved mozzarella, the sort that comes in a moistureless brick form. After that it's imported buffalo mozzarella, the soft white sort, and then a shower of gran parma. The sauce and three cheeses are then drizzled with olive oil before the pie goes into the oven. The oven at Di Fara is not brick or coal, but a regular pizza oven, like the one you'd find in any slice shop. Once the pizza is done, it is plucked from the oven and showered with more gran parma. The final step comes in the form of a big bouquet of fresh basil and oregano, which is snipped with scissors over the pie. This seems to be the most beautiful, as it's easy to imagine Dom simply plucking these herbs from his garden, and suddenly the busy street corner and the patrons vying for seating fade out of awareness and all that is left is an all consuming lust for this beautiful fusion of sauce and cheese.
Reader: the first bite was transportive. This is the only slice, and I've had a lot of slices, that has ever tasted thew way I remembered my favorite childhood slice tasting. It hit every note: salt, acidity, sweetness, char, the coolness of the basil, the bite of the gran parma. It was simply brilliant. Worth the heat and humidity? Absolutely. Worth all the hype? Definitely.
Now I'd be remiss not to mention two other pizza institutions here in Brooklyn that might suit your needs better if you're looking for incredible authentic pizza, but hoping to have a sit down experience. The first is Totono's, which is located in Coney Island and is the only place I can think of that might come close to what DeMarco is serving up at DiFara. The second is a beloved secret of my own, which resides a little south of my neighborhood, and that's Giuseppinas. While Giuseppinas offers, beautiful pizza fired up in a wood burning oven that often lights the whole restaurant. The experience is soundtracked by Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra, and the pizza comes out impossibly fast and still bubbling hot. As of yet it doesn't have the acclaim that Totonos and Di Fara do, so there are no lines, there's no rush, and there's hardly ever a wait. If you find yourself in South Park Slope, don't miss out on this place.
