For over 50 years, De Marco has made every pie at Di Fara in Midwood. Photo: Guillaume Godet
Domenico “Dom” De Marco, who opened the Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood, Brooklyn in 1965 that attracted legions of fans, has died. This was announced by his daughter Maggie De Marco Mieles in the Instagram account of the pizzeria, which did not indicate the cause of death. He was 85 years old.
“The best phrase that describes my father is that he was a man who loved America but missed his country of origin very much and spent all his time in America trying to create this Campania food culture,” says De Marco’s son. , Dominic Jr. “He brought the hills of Italy to Avenue G.” The younger De Marco adds, “There’s going to be great pizza in heaven, so let’s all do our best to get there someday.”
In 1959, De Marco emigrated to New York from the province of Caserta. According to the New York Times, in 2004, after working for a few months on a Long Island farm, De Marco opened a pizzeria in Sunset Park called Piccola Venezia with his brother. A few years later, he and a business partner named Farina opened Di Fara. “I do it like art,” he said at the time. “I don’t want to make big money. If someone comes here and bids me a price for the store, there will be no price.”
Dubbed the “Holy Grail of New York-style classic pizza” by the New York Underground Gourmet, Di Fara was a one-man show most of the time, so much so that the store closed if De Marco couldn’t work. . Until recently, he made every pizza himself, a fact that was deeply woven into the shop’s mythology. This gave the pizzeria an aura of craftsmanship, while the attention of the culinary world shifted to artisans and producers.
For decades, Di Fara was mostly known as the local slice shop, but it was eventually opened by the likes of Jim Leff, founder of Chowound, and Adam Cuban, who started the Slice pizza blog. Over time, a cult of fans formed around the pizzeria, and even more so De Marco himself, turning the small store into a place that food-obsessed New Yorkers almost had to visit.
Popularity has allowed prices to rise over time. In 2009, the Times covered the hype around the pizza place’s $5-a-piece price tag, quoting then-mayor Bloomberg as saying, “If you’ve ever eaten a really great slice of pizza, you know there are worse deals.” The manager of Astoria’s Rizzo’s, another favorite in the pizza world, bristled, “I couldn’t think of a single slice that could cost that much.” (In the same article, the paper called DeMarco “a bespectacled maverick from the New York pizza world.”)
Over the years, De Marco’s monastic devotion and his insistence on finishing his pies with fresh basil became a hallmark, and he helped inspire a new generation of pizza makers. There has never been a better time to eat a slice of pizza in New York, and Di Fara is arguably the most influential slice shop in the city’s history. Paying tribute to De Marco, Lucali owner Mark Iacono — a pizza legend in his own right — wrote: “You single-handedly turned the world of pizza upside down. You set the standard and lead to success for many of us.”
As Cuban says, “It’s hard – if not impossible – to imagine another pizza maker of this level, stamina and importance.”
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
Subscribe to the Grub Street newsletter.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice