PrintA Hellish Wait at Di Fara
This morning at the Serious Eats office Ed came in talking about how he had dinner with someone last night who had spent two hours in line at Di Fara earlier this week.
I was like, "TWO HOURS?!?! At Di Fara? Surely that's an exaggeration! Maybe two hours' total time there, but not solely in waiting."
Funny then that I should get a copy of David Rosengarten's Tastings newsletter in my inbox soon after. In it, Mr. Rosengarten recounts his very long wait, after which, he and his friend employ a novel tactic for getting their fix:
Mama mia. So it came down to this: to get a slice of pizza at Di Fara, you have to go up to a couple of complete strangers and beg for it. Not that I minded, mind you.....after all, this is major 'za we're discussing......but there's gotta be something wrong with a system that reduces a man to that.The pizza was good. Really good. Though not quite up to my five-year-old memory. Why? I remember more flavor then; this one was quieter. But it still had that droopy, soupy, wet-but-crisp textural complexity that the best Neapolitan and New York Neapolitan pizzas do. My faith in pizza was still secure—though my faith in humanity was a little shaken.
The full story is almost too painful to read because it's all too familiar.
I haven't been to Di Fara in ages—I love the place, but most times my hatred for crowds and lines overrides that. Has the wait really become two hours long?
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18 Comments:
The last time I was in there, the wait was about an hour and a half. And something had gone wrong with the oven so there was a huge cloud of smoke hanging over the entire room while I waited. The pizza was ultimately tasty, but certainly not worth the two days of asthma attacks that followed. I'm swearing off of DiFara until people stop frickin' talking about it and it goes back to being merely a normal pizza place that happens to serve really awesome pizza.
Slice Jess at 7:28PM on 01/19/07
Jess: thanks for the intel on the wait times. Unfortunately, talk will never cease, so it becoming normal again will never happen :(
Adam Kuban at 7:31PM on 01/19/07
I was there last weekend on a Saturday. I waited 3 hours to get a mushroom pie. Cheese pies seem to have come out much faster though.
Slice Jerry at 10:19PM on 01/19/07
I came down from New Rochelle to have Difara a few weeks ago. It took me two and a half hours to get down there because of traffic and then it took another two hours just for us to settle on slices. We were going to get a pie but I just became really hungry and Dom was not taking our order... Next time I am ordering ahead.
Slice The big Knish at 2:07AM on 01/20/07
Sadly I have to echo these reports. I was the fourth or fifth person inside the door at opening on the last Saturday of December. I ordered a pie with toppings (sausage and onion) within 10 minutes of entering. Perhaps 2 people ahead of me had ordered pies as well. John, Dom's son, brought out the tin full of the toppings I requested and wrote down my order for Dom. Over the course of the next 2 hours people arrived to cut in line without a care in the world. Words were exchanged. Didn't make much of a difference. John, to his credit, reminded Dom a few times that I was "next". I finally got my pie about 1:45PM. It will be a long while before my next visit.
Slice Mark at 8:11AM on 01/20/07
Was there tonight - called in a pizza around 445, arrived at 515, left at 615 with the box, so 90 mins for the pie. No rhyme or reason to the order in which Dom seemed to make the pizzas.
Slice Andy at 1:16AM on 01/21/07
My last visit was on a hot summer day with wife and two (teenaged) kids in tow. The wait was about forty-five minutes. The problem, as indicated by others above, is the lack of a systematic approach to the "who's next" question. Pies are made and distributed without rhyme or reason. Despite the stifling temperature in the joint, I left immensely satisfied. Have been following postings on Chowhound since then and detect a growing anti-Dom sentiment having mostly to do with waiting times. Maybe this will have a paradoxical effect of reducing demand and, thus, reducing wait times. Time will tell.
Slice famdoc at 2:17AM on 01/22/07
Anybody ever driven a car around the narrow streets of New York? Some days you could spend 45 minutes inching along one mile of highway. The entire time, you're looking around at how many cars and trucks are trying to cram into a space that was designed for a small fraction of them. The patience-testing experience has you swearing off a repeat performance. But that doesn't mean one should write off ever driving a car here. Believe it or not, there are actually times when driving around New York is not only easy but--dare I say it?--quite pleasant. Enter Di Fara. Nothing said here is an embellishement. Walking into Di Fara at 4 p.m. on a Saturday is like driving into the Theater District for a Wednesday matinee during Xmas season. Just as our roads haven't changed much in the last fifty years (nor should they!), neither has Mr. DeMarco. Same roads no matter how many more cars there are. Same approach to making pizza, whether there are 3 customers or 103 customers. The skinny: There *are* times when Di Fara is just another pizza place, at least in terms of crowds. Those are the only times I'm willing to go. Just as I'm not disclosing my parking secrets in a public forum, same goes for my Di Fara secrets. This reminds me of that Yogi Berra quote: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." And when Yogi goes to Di Fara, his pizza is is cut into only six slices ...
seltzerboy at 4:47AM on 01/22/07
We tried to go there last Sunday. As there were about 30 people waiting, I suggested to my girlfriend and sister that we head to Totonno's instead. A woman who was waiting said to me, "It's not the same." Well...she's absolutely right, but as she also revealed that she'd been waiting for 45 minutes and she waited an hour the day before (and left w/o pizza), I thought that my Dom fix would wait for another day.
Slice cjz at 4:39PM on 01/22/07
Seltzerboy: I thing the parking analogy is a bit of a stretch. With parking, the playing field is clear, as are the rules of the game. You have a car, you have parking regulations and you presumably have some insight into the parking situation in a particular neighborhood. With Dom, it seems as if the playing field is a bit tilted, in that there is no correlation between one's place in line and the waiting time. Your analogy reminds me of what one of my classmates used as his personal statement in our yearbook (he was from Buffalo): "You know you're a New Yorker when you see a parking spot and wish you had your car."
Slice famdoc at 7:52PM on 01/22/07
People, there is so much good pizza in New York. DiFara's is excellent, but it is not worth the time and (most importantly) the AGGREVATION. Might I suggest Totonno s or Joe & Pat s or Patsy s or Franny s or Peppino s or Denino s or .
Slice scannest at 8:26PM on 01/22/07
2 Hours??!!! Whoa, I went to DiFara's last year, it took me an hour and a half from Queens. It took me longer than usual to get a couple of slices, I had four, DiFara's is pretty good but its overrated, my favorite slice is found in Astoria at Rizzos' where you can get a zlice in less than 8 seconds.
Slice Anonymous at 11:27PM on 01/22/07
I was there on a Saturday a month or two ago. Got in at 5:30, placed an order for a cheese pie, got it at about 8:00. It was pretty clear that my order was forgotten at least once. Great pizza, but what a wait ...
Slice Matt at 4:38PM on 01/24/07
DiFara's is great, but definitely not worth enduring the stress and total lack of organization. It would be one thing if you could put in your order and relax for an hour while your pizza cooks. But you can't. You have to stand in front of the counter the entire time, jockeying for position and making sure you're not forgotten about. Couldn't they just invest in a "pick a number" system like they have at every two bit bakery in town? DiFara's makes wonderful pizza, but there are other alternatives in NYC and Brooklyn.
Slice Lefty at 10:21PM on 01/29/07
@Lefty: We actually suggested this a few months ago!
Adam Kuban at 10:33PM on 01/29/07
DiFara's makes a great slice, I heard about the artichoke square slice, I ordered one, and I waited over an hour to get it. It smell beautiful, it looked beautiful, but it tasted just okay, the thing is that they put a whole cooked artichoke on it. artichoke heart are tasty but the outside is bitter. I had a bit of a stomach ache after eating it. The only thing is that this is not a place to go if you have a short lunch break.
Slice Joe at 4:49PM on 04/25/07
Joe: I'm with you on the artichoke slices/pies. I always end up thinking the same thing after ordering one, but somehow, after several months, my tastememory goes away, and I order one, only to be disappointed. The outside of the 'choke is bitter, and the outer leaves get burned, too. I'm officially over the Di Fara artichoke slice. Adam K.
Adam Kuban at 5:37PM on 04/25/07
DiFara's a great place for Pizza, I would avoid going there on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Monday's and Tuesdays' around 1 to 2 pm have been the best days for getting pizza there without waiting forever.This and L&B are the best pizza shops in New York. I come all the way from upper manhattan, in the city we have so many"Ray's" which is probably known as the best pizza in Manhattan(Patsy's used to be good and John's and Lombardi's are tourist traps), I have eaten at the real one on 11th and 6th Avenue, Di Fara's and Spumoni Gardens completely trumps it. I would also give an honorable mention to Rizzo's on Steinway St. in Astoria, as well as Rosa's on Fresh Pond Road in Maspeth.
Slice Tom at 11:13PM on 04/29/07