Di Fara Pizza

On a balmy and breezy Tuesday night, the A-man and I made a pilgrimage to Di Fara in Midwood. If you've never biked down Ocean Parkway in the early evening hours, i highly recommend it. The benches lining the street are packed - old smelly dudes playing chess, their counterpart old lady friends sitting around gossiping, little brown kids squealing and running around, Hasidic couples strolling along with their 9 kids, young Eastern European guys lounging around and staring at you suspiciously...it's like a tour of the EU. Anyway, after biking down a quiet and deserted stretch of Avenue J, we arrive at our destination: an unassuming, almost run-down pizza parlor at the corner of Avenue J and 15th street. We walk in and immediately smell fresh out of the oven pizza and see the herd of people crowded around the counter. The most adorable old Italian man, Dom DeMarco the owner of Di Fara, is slowly and methodically making pizza after pizza: stretching the dough, pouring the sauce marinara sauce, spreading the mozzarella slices and sprinkling the parmesan cheese, drizzling the olive oil, adding the finishing touches once the pizza is out of the oven. It seems like he's in his own world, barely noticing the crowd gathered in front of him, anxiously waiting for a taste of his amazing pizza. The decor isn't anything to talk about - bright and uncomfortable florescent overhead lights, grimy tables and chairs, aged linoleum floors.


The walls are plastered with articles from every major magazine and newspaper proclaiming Di Fara as the best...best pizza, in brooklyn, in new york, in America! The pizza is good. Damn good. Probably one of the best slices I've ever had (although Totonno's in Coney Island is pretty good too.) The crust is thin and both crispy and chewy. The cheese has a slight tang and saltiness to it and the sauce is just perfect - a tad sweet. The pizza is greasy, but not in a gross-i-feel-sick-after-three-bites sort of way. The olive oil increases the intensity of all the other flavors and gives the pizza an added richness. I'm not quite sure why this pizza tastes so much better than all the countless ones I've eaten...maybe it's the combination of sweet and salty that just hits your taste buds spot on. Make the trip to Di Fara, it's worth it. Oh and stick with the plain slices, the best parts are the sauce and cheese.