The Best NY Pizza Ever!?!
Some places lend themselves to hyperbole. Anything less fails to do justice to their character. These are the sorts of places you just have to try for yourself so that you, too, can join in the fun and excitement of extravagant statements like this: Di Fara is the best New York pizza you will ever taste. Everything you have read or heard is true.
You will trek out to Avenue J in [edit] Midwood, well East of Brooklyn [/edit]. (Read: I can’t even imagine how you’d get there with public transportation. [edit] Neither could my friend who lives in Brooklyn, but per Peter’s comment, below, it’s actually quite easy.[/edit])
You may not be sure that your order has actually been registered, which will cause you to hover, or choose a delegate to hover. This will also keep your pizza from mistakenly being sold off in slices to the hungry mob, as we saw nearly happen on our visit.
You will wait, and wait some more. Yes, every pizza really is made one at a time from start to bubbling finish by Domenico DeMarco, who is now well into his [edit -- oops, thought we had read 70s somewhere!] 60s [/edit] and has been doing this, fourteen hours a day, since 1964. He is focused, deliberate, and not to be rushed.
The restaurant itself is grungy and worn. But it has a place to sit and a place to put your pie, which is really all you need, possibly in life, (the hyperbole had to come back at some point) because, when it emerges from the oven, you will be faced with the best New York pizza ever. Possibly some of the best pizza anywhere, ever. I may not be the world’s foremost pizza expert, but I’m far from the only one who thinks we’ve It: just check out the countless awards on the walls, or the many, many, many… posts from other bloggers who have succumbed to Di Fara’s wiles
Why so good? Great ingredients with everything in perfect balance.
Oh, and resist any silly urges to blot your pizza: that’s extra virgin olive oil on top and it’s there for a reason!
If you are looking for a more methodical take on Di Fara, or want to know more of why exactly it’s so good, ask someone who’s one visit hasn’t left her with a deep burning desire to fly back to New York, hit up a friend with a car, and trek back out past Brooklyn to while away a few hours in a dirty restaurant just to get another slice. Like maybe Peter. He knew it from the neighborhood back before it was good and can seemingly go there anytime he wants. Oh, except that he gives in at the end too. It even drove him to write haiku. I guess it really is that good.
Di Fara Pizza
1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY
718.258.1367
 
| Explanation of ratings |
Attire: as casual as it gets.
Peter Cherches said,
October 13, 2006 @ 6:27 pm
Nice piece, but a couple of corrections:
Dom isn’t well into his 70s, he’s pushing 70, I believe.
Di Fara is in Midwood. That’s not in the eastern part of Brooklyn, and nobody really conceptualizes east or west brooklyn. There is a section called South Brooklyn, but it’s not in the southern part of Brooklyn (but was the south side of the 19th Century city of Brooklyn).
Getting there by public transportation is a piece of pie–it’s right near a subway station.
Pete
Olivia said,
October 15, 2006 @ 10:02 am
My apologies on the inaccuracies. Thank you for the correct info Pete! Silly West Coasters, and West Coast transplant friend in Brooklyn who apparently also was not aware that the area is called Midwood. Now we know.