{"id":2402,"date":"2018-04-02T19:16:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T23:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.margotspizza.com\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2018-05-10T21:15:51","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T01:15:51","slug":"hello-di-fara-its-been-a-while","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/margotspizza.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/02\/hello-di-fara-its-been-a-while\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello, Di Fara. It’s been a while\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Two
Two plain slices awaiting their eaters.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Hello, Di Fara,” is a greeting that is indelibly burned into my mind, spoken in Dom DeMarco’s Italian-accented English. It’s the telephone greeting I’ve heard Dom utter countless times over the years while waiting for pies in his beloved Brooklyn pizzeria.<\/p>\n

It’s also the line I muttered to myself as I walked through the door there recently because it certainly had been a while.<\/p>\n

I rarely go to Di Fara these days\u2014usually only when someone implores me to guide them through their first visit there. My thoughts are that it’s a lovely place, one that holds a lot of fond memories and serves great pizza, but jockeying for a pie or slice is an arduous task.<\/p>\n

After a recent visit in February, though, I saw they’d streamlined some things, and the process of getting a slice was easier than any time I can recall.<\/p>\n

\"Di
It’s a bit cryptic at first, but then you see the logic. Triangles are regular slices; rectangles are Sicilian squares.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They’ve got an orderly system for ordering, with a line and a notepad, the notepad filled with a charming shorthand where triangles stand in for regular slices and rectangles represent squares.<\/p>\n

\"Di
The crowd presses in. Photographed May 1, 2005, during the heyday of Slice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a far cry from the old days, when pizza-craving hordes crowded the counter 2- and 3-deep trying to get Dom’s attention and get in their requests.<\/p>\n

In fact, on the Saturday I rolled up at Di Fara, they opened the gate at 11:46am, I had ordered not more than 5 minutes later, and had my slices by 11:55.<\/p>\n

If the new Di Fara procedure is this swift and easy all the time, I’d be there more often.<\/p>\n

It made me think of one of the most popular posts I wrote for Slice<\/a><\/em>(the pizza blog I founded in 2003 and then sold to Serious Eats<\/a><\/em> when I signed on as SE’s founding editor): “All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009<\/a>”<\/p>\n

So many things have changed in the 9 years since I wrote that post:<\/p>\n