Di Fara's Pizza in Brooklyn -

I recently took a trip to Brooklyn, New York. The same area that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got their start and, I’m guessing, their addiction to pizza. A turtle eating pizza makes total sense in a  place like Brooklyn. The pizza there is like an ambrosia passed down by the god. Every one of these pizzerias found their equivalent of Thor’s Hammer, but in the form of an ancient pizza oven.

While traveling through the Olympus of Pizza I did find one clear winner. And no, it was not that fried pizza from Forcella’s in Williamsburg.

One pizza place that understands the balance of the pizza triforce; a perfect blend of sauce, cheese, and crust.

A pizza place that knows how to deliver a fundamentally perfect pie and sidesteps gimmicks.

A pizza so perfect that it was crafted on Zeus’s anvil and delivered by pegasus himself. 

That place is DiFara in Midwood, Brooklyn. I was so inspired by my visit I put together a video chronicling what goes on at DiFara. I talk to some folks who waited an hour in line just to get into the pizza place, and a chef who goes into the nitty gritty of what makes DiFara the best.

Enjoy the video. I’ll have more on DiFara Pizza tomorrow.

Some say Pittsburgh’s Little Italy is in Bloomfield. But those people are wrong. They’ve never been to the secret best Pizza place in Pittsburgh - the backyard of a certain Dan Cardone.

I’m lucky enough to frequent this quasi-pizzeria  regularly and it never disappoints. When you get over the shock that there’s a legitimate pizza oven in the backyard (next to the Bocci court, naturally), the surreal thought thatmaybe, just maybe, you’ve been transported to Naples begins to set in. 

The oven is a magical thing. Dough, cheese, and sauce go in, and out comes a circular, bubbly, disc, that shares the same DNA as the pizzas served in the heart of Italy. The edges get a little charred during the cooking.  But because of the 900 degree temperatures, it remains fluffy and soft on the inside. It’s hard outer shell is just an evolutionary feature of pizza and, obviously, how it’s survived in the wild so long.

No matter what comes out of that oven, it’s automatically added to the list you keep in the back of your mind of the top 10 pizzas you’ve ever eaten. There’s no discussion, no discourse. It’s added onto the list and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then you spend the rest of your life wondering if you’re the type of person who builds a brick oven in your backyard. And guess what? You probably are. Start collecting those bricks.

While my Lawrenceville apartment can’t currently host a pizza oven without fear of burning down a city block, this is the next best thing. Enjoy the photos - they chronicle my latest outing there and what it takes for a pizza to go from a chunk of dough to a slice of heaven. 

 

 

I Don't Know Where New Haven Is But I Know They Have Pizza and a Guy Named Pete

imageI Googled it, New Haven is in Connecticut. But mistakes were made and it’s better to move forward, not backward. There’s never pizza behind you. Remember that.

Pete’s APizza (apizza?) brings the “famous New Haven” apizza to the depths of Washington, DC. As the nation’s capitol it’s only appropriate that there is a selection of pizza from across the United States.

I’ve never heard of New Haven Style pizza, but I’m always up for a new spin on the classic pie. I mean, what makes pizza so amazing is it’s a cuisine made up of three basic ingredients: bread, cheese, sauce. That’s it. Anyone with a $2 bill could gather enough ingredients to build a pizza. So any spin on the formula without adding a cesspool of toppings is an exciting thing to a pizza journalist. 

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What’s funny about DC is that it’s tough to come across a place that will sell a single slice of pizza to you. It’s like bizarro New York city. But Pete’s Apizza fills that tiny hole in your tiny pizza heart.

Once you pick the apizza you want from their minuscule apizza zoo, you pick out how many pitchers of Peroni you’ll be enjoying. 

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It’s casual for sure, but this is no Sbarro’s. It’s a smart and intelligent take on pizza that Henry Ford would be proud of. Quite a streamlined process. They even give you a little table card. 

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Eight is the number of slices I wish I had ordered.

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So here’s the pizza. Sorry, apizza. It’s simple and efficient, much like their process. There’s no mess and no excess of anything. It’s quaint. Just how I imagine New Haven to be.

For as basic as it looks, this pizza is full of that crunch.

It’s as if there’s invisible crust on the top of the pizza. It’s surrounded by an aura of brittleness that breaks apart as soon as your canines find their way into the cheese. From top to bottom, it’s crust. Not crusty because that’s a bad thing. But crunchy, shattering, crust. Laminated with cheese.

The sauce, well, I’m not sure there is any sauce. Check out this cross section.

imageStraight from cheese to crust! There’s no easing into it or lubrication between the two. They just sit atop of each other like oil and water. Or best friends intertwined with one another. Does sauce know they’re having a party without them? Perhaps.

You can’t even fold this pizza in half without worrying about a pizza splinter breaking off of the mother ship and blinding you. Never able to witness pizza bubbling in the oven again.

Or see what time it is in Naples. Or New Haven.

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I found the pizza a bit dry and too full of crunch. It’s special. But I think I prefer something a bit on the softer side. But, for fans of crust I think you’re in for a treat. 

And here’s some Peroni being poured–a necessary to keep your whistle nice and whet. 

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Pizza on the Radio - A Post-Mortem

Remember when I was on the radio talking about pizza? Oh, no? Well I was summoned by the spirits of pizza and delivered to the studios at Star 100.7 to judge Pittsburgh’s finest pizza. 

Things got messy.

How could it not? Imagine being in a room with 11 other pizza judges are sleepy pizza delivery people make their way out to Green Tree at 7am to deliver pies that were once piping hot. Their trip through the tunnels and the resulting traffic, has zapped them of much of their enthusiasm  After the journey, the pizza emerged, but changed. Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. But this metamorphosis was less beautiful, and more, well, tired. The pizza was very tired of being a pizza and it showed. But pizza wasn’t meant to travel else it would have grown wings and fly itself to the destination.

Sure it’s wheel-shaped, but that’s only for looks. I’m telling you this because that is a very important caveat when it comes to judging pizza and, one of the most challenging aspects. When you’re eating aged pizza you have to be able to assess what the pizza was like. Can your tastebuds time travel? No, but it must be able to reverse engineer the pizza to understand what it tasted like two hours ago when it birth from the oven.

A rare-skill. 

But that didn’t deter us one bit. We were bubbling over with enthusiasm. The possibility of becoming one with so many pizzas at 7am was exactly what we dreamed of as kids. “Mom, I promise I’ll do all my homework if I can just not go to school and eat pizza then take naps all day.” Okay. Sure. And then pizzas started showing up.

These pizzas were nothing less than ostentatious. The majority of which were piled high with meats, cheeses, and wacky sauces. These pizzas leaned more towards meat cornucopia and stretched the definition of pizza. 

Of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum was the avant garde types that left many judges scratching their head at what exactly they were looking at. Let’s just assume that many of these minimalist pizzas were ahead of their time.



The pizza makers tried to impress the judges by showing us that, yes, they could add a Jenga-style tower of meat on top of their sturdy crust. Did they think we’d be impressed by the lake of grease it left behind? Or the heaps of garlic that would have dissolved any vampire within a mile radius?

These two pizzas above didn’t win anything - which is too bad! Because in their own way they were delicious. Just not after their journey. Or at 7am. And after 16 pizzas the judges spoke and one pizza rose above the others.

This little sliver of a pizza. A humble pizza. This was chosen instead of the monstrous piles or meats or overly complex slices we were served. This wasn't decadent  but one of the simplest slices of pizza a human could create. If Indiana Jones were looking for the Slice of a Carpenter, he would choose this one. And choose wisely. 

The winning pizza belonged to Pizza Parma located in Shady Side on Highland Ave. It best epitomized what pizza is. A fun, simple experience, that reminds you that sometimes the most simple things in life are the best things.

Pizza On the Radio - Tomorrow Between 7 - 9 AM

I dunno what happened, but I’m going to be part of a pizza judging competition that takes place on the radio. Gather your family and your favorite pizza treasures (pizza cutter, pizza bib, pizza pin) and tune in to Star 100.7 tomorrow morning between 7am and 9am. 

I have no idea what the itinerary is, but there will be at least 30 pizzas to try and I made sure to let them know I was a pizza journalist so they know I mean business. I’ll document the event as much as possible. I expect a to emerge from this with a brand new face full of pizza acne. 

If anyone has the chapter from Emily Post about eating pizza on the radio, please forward that to me ASAP. 

imvencible:

My 6 year old cousin created this awesome pizza dude who shoots chorizos, it was so cool that I had to draw it too.

Art on kid!

Woah! A pizza super hero. I always thought Pizza Man was a man who vowed to protect and serve pizza to patrons of his Pizza Cave. Never did I think it would be an actual pizza that shoots chorizos.

I can see this taking off. Pizza Man - half cheese, half pepperoni, all justice.