One Pizza at a Time, He Defined the New York Slice

I first noticed Domenico DeMarco in motion greater than 20 years in the past, though if you happen to ever noticed him at work you already know that there was hardly any motion to see except you watched him very intently.

Through the years he had organized his mise en place so compactly, eradicated extraneous actions so ruthlessly, that it may appear, to the untrained eye, that he merely bowed over a circle of uncooked dough and waited whereas it assembled itself right into a pizza.

Mr. DeMarco has died at age 85, his daughter Margie DeMarco Mieles introduced Thursday in a Fb publish. Initially from the Italian province of Caserta, he started making pies at Di Fara Pizza in Midwood, Brooklyn, in 1965.

He labored effectively. That’s not the identical as saying he labored shortly. Even within the years earlier than Mr. DeMarco turned one thing of a nationwide people hero and the traces on weekends would stretch on to the sidewalk outdoors his store on Avenue J, getting sizzling meals out of his kitchen took some time.

This was true it doesn’t matter what you ordered. Finally the demand for pizza pushed nearly all the pieces else off the menu, however at the moment you may nonetheless get an astonishing meatball sub, or spaghetti with recent clams, or baked manicotti. That first time, I had meant to strive a consultant pattern of the menu. Then I noticed a handwritten signal — on a paper plate taped to the wall, if I keep in mind accurately — that stated “child artichoke pizza,” and all of the sudden all I wished was child artichoke pizza. An entire one.

That actually took some time. Mr. DeMarco sautéed what struck me as sufficient artichokes for 4 massive pies after which unfold them over the one which was going to be mine, all mine. Ready for it to come back out of the gasoline oven was some of the thrilling moments of my consuming life, and it was no much less thrilling because the second stretched to half-hour and stored stretching towards a full hour.

That day, I started to seen Mr. DeMarco as a dwelling hyperlink between the cooking of Southern Italy, the place he was born in 1936, and New York Metropolis’s corner-slice tradition.

Pizza snobs 20 years in the past thought it was self-evident that the one worthwhile pizza was the sort made by Neapolitan-style brick-oven pizzerias like Totonno’s and Lombardi’s, which may hint their culinary lineage straight again to Naples. It was much less clear that the greasily dependable New York slice, baked at decrease warmth in gasoline ovens and consumed on the sidewalk by guys like Tony Manero, belonged to any culinary custom in any respect.

At the moment the gas-oven slice is an object of significant examine and appreciation. Outlets like Scarr’s, Upside and Mama’s Too have re-examined the fashion and supplied refined, respectful enhancements. And it began at Di Fara.

You couldn’t miss the integrity of Mr. DeMarco’s cooking, though he did it standing nonetheless on a patch of kitchen flooring no larger than a bathmat. There was his sauce, each thicker and thinner than different slice retailers’; it could be largely absorbed into the dough, however would depart behind a couple of meaty purple shreds of pulp.

There have been the cheeses, plural, which he would grate instantly over the tomatoes in some excellent ratio that solely he knew. There was the stay basil he snipped to order over the completed pies or slices. I by no means believed all of it got here from the one, scrawny potted plant rising within the window, however there are individuals who will swear they as soon as noticed Dom himself clip off a department. Earlier than a second location was opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it was stated that nobody else was allowed to make a pizza at Di Fara.

Watching him make a pie compelled you to vary your view of slice-joint pizzerias normally. Loads of them aren’t superb, it’s true. However the gasoline ovens aren’t accountable. If Mr. DeMarco may use a gasoline oven to bake pizza that made you see the solar glinting off the Bay of Naples, then so may different cooks. They most likely wouldn’t equal Mr. DeMarco’s stolid fastidiousness, however they may strive.

The final time I went to Di Fara was simply earlier than the pandemic. It was the center of the afternoon on a weekday and there was no line, like within the previous days. There appeared to be half a dozen individuals working a type of meeting line behind the counter, and I feared for a second that Mr. DeMarco had been changed by a staff of cooks.

However each considered one of them was concerned in taking orders, dealing with money and ensuring every slice ended up in the suitable fingers. Hidden behind this meeting line was Mr. DeMarco, standing on his little sq. of flooring, bowing over the dough, keen the pizzas into existence.