A Slice reader alerted us to a looooong thread on Chowhound about the interminable wait and dropped orders at Di Fara. It was started by this post:
There is no way I will get my husband to go back to try again, but I would like to know if anyone else has had this kind of experience, in case I make a visit with other friends. Were we wrong to order a whole pie? Were we wrong to order mushrooms? I hadn't gotten this from previous postings, but is this another case of a grumpy owner who decides that he doesn't like you and gives you bad service to get you out? If this is the case, what could we have done to tick them off?
If we had gotten a pizza in regular time and it was terrible, I don't think I would be as disappointed as I was with the service we got today. Bad Chow Day.
This being Chowhound, the OP (original poster) was thoroughly beaten down for dissing a canonized chowspot. And someone participating in the thread went so far as to take out the domain difarapizza.com and post this there:
Re: Di Fara disappointment
To all those that have been bitching about the amount of time it takes to get a slice of pizza at DiFara. If you want pizza thirty minutes or less call Dominoes pizza or Papa Johns Or stay in Manhattan and and eat your "Rays Famous" crap. Things in Brooklyn, take a little longer, because it's always better. Please do us all a favor and stop coming to DiFara, then maybe us Brooklynites don't have to wait for a slice of love. There is nothing that kills the mode of happiness, than to hear all of you complainers while we sit and wait for pizza. As us Brooklynites love to say "Go see, where ya gotta go"
I'd say that Dom didn't drop the order to spite the OP. Listen, he's done it frequently to us here at Slice, sometimes forgetting the order twice and drawing out our wait for pizza to two hours. You wish there was a better system, you know there won't ever be, and you choose to deal with it or not. It's one of the main reasons I'm hesitant to go to Di Fara anymore. Nine times outta ten these days, when I consider Di Fara, I weigh the options, and then opt out.
Which, I guess, plays into the hands of the publisher of DiFaraPizza.com (who "is not associated with Difara in any way").
Di Fara is not the problem. It's the victim of a much larger problem. Too often, pizza is viewed as fast food. Di Fara is anything but fast food. In pretty much any restaurant, people are used to having their food delivered in less than 30 minutes. When someone says a restaurant has "good service," what they mean is the food made it from kitchen to table in short order. The problem isn't Di Fara; it's our culture, which demands speed in everything. Yes, it takes longer for Di Fara to produce your pie a lot longer, in fact. If time is your primary concern when eating out, there are no shortage of other places that will meet your needs. But when you go to Di Fara, you are engaging in something other than fast food. When I go to Di Fara, I know what I'm in for. I bring a book. But even without reading material, there's enough to keep you busy there. Commisserate with fellow patrons; share your Di Fara strategies with others; talk with Mr. DeMarco about his tomatoes or his family or whatever; pick your own herbs from the plants in the window; learn to speak a little Italian; uncork a bottle of wine; do some shopping along Avenue J and learn to speak a little Hebrew or Yiddish; study Mr. DeMarco's every move as he makes a pie (amazingly, this never gets old); grab a rag, and clean the tables; take out the garbage. Over the years, I have done all of these things while waiting for a Di Fara pie. It has become part of the experience an experience I wouldn't change a bit. There's a group of off-duty cops who pass the time by playing cards. Waiting an hour for Mr. DeMarco's pie makes you appreciate it even more. I could list a dozen ways in which Mr. DeMarco could speed up his operation. But all of them would hinder the final product. To me, that final product is what's most important. Why the hurry? Life's too short. Throw out the cellular phone, unplug your laptop and television, and wait an hour for your pizza. Slow down; you just might enjoy it more.
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Di Fara is not the problem. It's the victim of a much larger problem. Too often, pizza is viewed as fast food. Di Fara is anything but fast food. In pretty much any restaurant, people are used to having their food delivered in less than 30 minutes. When someone says a restaurant has "good service," what they mean is the food made it from kitchen to table in short order. The problem isn't Di Fara; it's our culture, which demands speed in everything. Yes, it takes longer for Di Fara to produce your pie a lot longer, in fact. If time is your primary concern when eating out, there are no shortage of other places that will meet your needs. But when you go to Di Fara, you are engaging in something other than fast food. When I go to Di Fara, I know what I'm in for. I bring a book. But even without reading material, there's enough to keep you busy there. Commisserate with fellow patrons; share your Di Fara strategies with others; talk with Mr. DeMarco about his tomatoes or his family or whatever; pick your own herbs from the plants in the window; learn to speak a little Italian; uncork a bottle of wine; do some shopping along Avenue J and learn to speak a little Hebrew or Yiddish; study Mr. DeMarco's every move as he makes a pie (amazingly, this never gets old); grab a rag, and clean the tables; take out the garbage. Over the years, I have done all of these things while waiting for a Di Fara pie. It has become part of the experience an experience I wouldn't change a bit. There's a group of off-duty cops who pass the time by playing cards. Waiting an hour for Mr. DeMarco's pie makes you appreciate it even more. I could list a dozen ways in which Mr. DeMarco could speed up his operation. But all of them would hinder the final product. To me, that final product is what's most important. Why the hurry? Life's too short. Throw out the cellular phone, unplug your laptop and television, and wait an hour for your pizza. Slow down; you just might enjoy it more.
seltzerboy at 8:18PM on 06/22/06