Kevin Skobac
lovelifenow
If you aren't familiar, Di Fara's is a pizza institution. Dom DeMarco makes every single pizza by hand, and prepares every ingredient fresh. To him pizza is an art- and every step from pounding out the dough, to drizzling the olive oil, to cutting some fresh basil on top (that he home grows) right before he hands you the pie is done with care. The pizza he hands you is perfect- every bite is full of flavor. Having heard of Dom's pizzas ever since I moved to NYC, I expected a lot. He didn't disappoint, though- it's easily one of the best pizza's I've had. And after watching him make at least twenty pizzas by hand with such meticulous focus I have a new appreciation for the art of pizza.
There are down-sides of course. Because of Dom's insistance in perfection and the need to hand-craft each pie himself, pizzas come out of his oven slowly. It takes him about 5 minutes to make each pie, and 3 pies can fit in his coal oven. So as people line up in rows deep wanting a taste of his perfect pizzas the orders come slowly. Our group ordered 2 pies and waited at least 1.5 hours to get them.
Now I'm sure our immense hunger and anticipation only helped boost the enjoyment when we actually got to eat our pies, but it's also a huge pain to go through. It means as much as I'll be dreaming of another pizza from Di Fara's I won't be going back very often. If you decide to go, however, I recommend trying the semi-dried cherry tomatoes, and my friends seemed pretty happy with their roasted garlic & onion pizza. Also plan on waiting a while, and that it's BYOB (though there's no public bathroom there so not sure alcohol is a good idea).
[For more, read Serious Eat's original article back in 2004]
