In celebration of my 23rd birthday, my boyfriend and I went to NYC for a quick little weekend getaway. It was a great little vacation- one of my bf’s friends very generously offered to let us stay in his Brooklyn apartment, and we made a couple of excursions into the city to see some sights and eat a lot of great food.
After sleeping in, we drove over to Di Fara’s and got there around 10:45 on Saturday morning. It was definitely super early, but we’re both early birds and didn’t want to sit around the apartment much longer. Around 11:05, the second person in line showed up, and people trickled in from then on. Di Fara’s opens at noon, but they opened the doors 15 minutes early and we were good to go. First customers of the day! If you visit, this place is cash only. We only had to wait about 10 minutes for our pizza, and since we were the first ones in, grabbed the table for two. Drinks seemed to be on the house (probably due to the chaotic atmosphere,) and it’s also BYOB. There’s no wait staff- you go to the counter to order, and when it’s done, they’ll call your name out for you to get it.
We had a little trouble deciding what to order. Most people recommend just going with cheese, no toppings. However, being that I love pepperoni, and every pizza on here is scored against Pepe’s pepperoni, I felt that I had to give the pepperoni at Di Fara’s a shot. So, we went half pepperoni, half cheese. I have to say, the pepperoni really isn’t needed. It just wasn’t as good as at Pepe’s- not as spicy, and had a chewier texture, more like sausage. The pepperoni led to an excess of grease. I didn’t dab it off with a napkin, but I did try and let it drip off. The cheese is mozzarella and is very good, but doesn’t have a very distinct taste. It seems to absorb the flavors of everything else on the pizza, which isn’t a bad thing. The Parmesan thrown on halfway through helped solidify the cheese all together by the time it got to our table. I’m not a green stuff person at all, but I really liked the basil! It tasted great, and went super well with the cheese. The sauce was similar to Pepe’s- very soft bites of tomato in it, and you can tell that it’s just high quality. It was probably my favorite part of the entire thing. The crust was very crispy and had a slight burnt taste. Where it wasn’t absorbing any grease, it was a little dry. As one bite, the pepperoni, cheese, sauce, and crust, all came together really well as a whole.
To be fair, Di Fara’s is a different style of pizza than Pepe’s, but I can’t help that feel like in the end, Di Fara’s just falls a little short of beating my hometown favorite.
Website: www.difara.com
[…] go wrong with mozzerella, their amazing sauce, and yummy basil. Taste-wise, it reminded me a lot of Di Fara‘s. The Calabrese / pepperoni pizza was my favorite because duh, it was basically the […]