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After
five
or so bone-chilling trips into the Big Apple, I finally had the
opportunity to
walk through
Now
I am a
pretty lucky guy. Just think about the job I have…I travel the world
and eat
pizza, but for every yin there’s a yang. On this trip my yang got stuck
in
Queens for four days because every hotel in 
fares didn’t
eat my expense budget alive.) I was also fortunate enough to score a
creampuff
of a ticket to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium, which was
conveniently
located right across the street. My seat was close enough to the field
to hear
Mike Piazza talking to the runners who were lucky enough to make it to
first
base. I want to say thanks to whoever that scalper was who sold me a
$15 ticket
that close to the field. He must have heard my southern drawl and had
pity on me
since it was my first MLB game.
It
wasn’t
all playtime while I was there. This round, Gemma Schiano of Grande
Cheese
chauffeured me around to my last four stops of my search for the Top
Ten
Landmark and Legendary Pizzerias of New York. I also want to thank Chef
Bruno,
corporate chef for Marsal & Sons, for taking me to a couple of his
personal
favorite pizzerias. My last four stops were DiFara’s Pizzeria and
You’re in His World Now.
At my first
stop, Gemma and I spent about 30 minutes looking for a parking spot. I
hear
this is a time-honored tradition for the natives. We score a spot and
walk up
the street to this little corner pizzeria. There’s an old man outside
unlocking
the gates over the storefront. Gemma introduces me, and we walk inside.
The
inside is about as basic as any place could be. There are about three
or four
plain, wooden tables and chairs and a counter with a small table and
oven
behind it in the front corner. Behind the counter in the front corner
is a
window that opens up to the sidewalk. A couple of herbs are growing in
the
window. The owner is Domenico DiMarco (Domenic to everyone who knows
him) and
the pizzeria is DiFara’s Pizza.
As
Domenic
shuffles behind the counter to open the window, I begin to ask him
about his
history. He comes over to the counter and leans against it and starts
to tell
me his story with a voice that combines a
History
and Background
Domenic
came to the
Domenic
at Work
The
pizza
at DiFara’s is wonderful. People are usually stacked up at the counter
at least
two people deep, but in my opinion that is not why you should visit.
The reason
why you should visit is to see what old school pizza making is like.
Domenic is
the only person you see out front. He is a one-man operation and
everyone who
comes in is on his time schedule. I stand back and watch him as
he takes a
single dough ball, which he makes every day at 9 a.m. He slices off
hunks of
fresh mozzarella directly from the loaf and makes each pizza one at a
time.
Meanwhile, customers are continually stacking up behind the counter and at the
window outside. The phone rings and Domenic stops making the pizza to
walk over
and spend five minutes telling an out-of-towner how to get to the
pizzeria. He
hangs up and walks back over to the counter and spends a few minutes
talking
with people while everyone is waiting anxiously for a slice. After a
few
minutes, he walks over to the oven and reaches in with his bare hands
to slice
the pizza out and checks to see how it is. Did I mention that he
reaches into
the oven with his bare hands? If it is ready, he shuffles over to the
counter,
slices it and starts to hand out slices to eager customers. Once the
finished
pizza is dished out—and it only takes about five minutes—he walks back
over and
finishes making the single pizza he left when the phone rang 10 minutes
earlier.
“Nobody
pushes Domenic to get in a hurry,” one customer outside the window
tells me. “I
used to say, ‘Domenic…come on’ and try to hurry him, but I discovered
years ago
that once you step in here, you are on his time.”
I asked
Domenic why with all of the demand doesn’t he hire some help. “I would
rather
spend my money on top quality ingredients and not have any overhead,”
he tells
me. “I have two sons and one daughter who help me, but I make the
pizza. I work
here seven days a week, but I am thinking about starting to close on
Mondays.
When will I retire? I never really thought of that. If I do, it’s up to
my sons
and daughter whether they keep the place. I don’t do this because of
the money,
I do it because I like it. Back in the
day, this was a heavily Jewish populated area. Most everything was
closed on
Saturdays, but I was open…the only restaurant open here. That’s when
everyone
started coming.”
The
Pizza
“I
taught
myself to make pizza,” Domenic says. “I did bring a few things back
from
People are
in such a hurry these days. Restaurant owners struggle to sell more
volume and
more and more the old ways are being forgotten. The entire time I was
at
DiFara’s I never saw anyone rolling their fingers on the counter or
tapping
their foot trying to be in a hurry. They all talked to each other and
enjoyed
the scene of one old man making pizza. His pizzeria forces people to
talk to
each other and no one rushes him. You come to love the wait and watch a
way of
business that has long been forgotten in the hustle and bustle of
everyday
life. You walk in DiFara’s and you walk into a time warp…you are in
Domenic’s
world and on his time…you eat when he is ready for you to eat.
Still
in the Family
My
second
stop with Gemma Schiano was also in
The
original house that everyone grew up in was located directly behind the
restaurant. As Louie Barbati gives me a tour of the area where they
make the
spumoni, he calls me over to a door. I look out of the back door and
see the
door to the house just 15 feet away. “We all grew up here,” he says.
“Everyone
would walk out of the house right into work. My grandfather built a
business
around his life, or vice-versa. We used to store all of our ingredients
in his
garage. It started out as just a spumoni business, but when my uncle
came out
of the service they added the pizzeria and then the restaurant.”
The
Pizza
“Our
grandfather taught pizza to his sons, and they taught it to his
grandsons. Now
there are about 10 family members in the business,” Louie says. “Why
pizza?
That is a good question. When the first son came back from military
service he
had nothing to do, so pizza was the perfect addition to spumoni. No one
in our
family had ever done pizza before. Well, we had one uncle who worked in
a
bakery and ended up opening his own pizzeria, but that is a different
place.
Our pizza is light and airy…not a lot of cheese. Nobody in
At first
glance their pizza looks thick and heavy, but once you pick it up you
find that
the looks are deceiving. Instead, it is very light. They dress the
pizza with
sauce, cheese and oil and place them on a rack beside the oven. The
pizzas warm
up, giving them a twice-raised dough characteristic and are then
cooked.
What
Makes L&B Special
Louie
says
that what makes L&B special is the location. “Back years ago, in
the late
1950s, all of the cars would park across the street and people would
come over
and order food and eat outside,” he says. “It was great. After a while,
there
got to be a lot of bikers who would come out here. There would be all
of these
motorcycles parked everywhere. We weren’t a biker joint with a rough
crowd. It
was just a lot of people who had motorcycles and a great place to hang
out.
Others would come out to look at all of the bikes. We don’t have, and
never
will have, a liquor license. We just don’t want that kind of clientele.”
Spumoni
The
spumoni
L&B sells is best described as a milk sherbet. Louie says his
father
Americanized it and used chopped almonds instead of fresh fruit. “All
that is
in spumoni is milk, sugar, and flavoring,” Louie says. “With the six
machines
we have, we can make five gallons each in 15 minutes. We usually make
three
different flavors at once, two machines for each flavor. Usually we
make
vanilla, pistachio, and chocolate.”
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Inside
L&B you can find old pictures of the original building, which is
still in
use—just with a slight facelift. All of the recipes, from the pizza to
their
spumoni are the exact recipes created by the grandfather and his sons
when they
first opened. From one generation to the next,
Next
Issue
In
the next
issue, I am going to round out my tour of the top ten legendary
– PMQ –