jsteingarten’s Profile
Recent Comments
'Nightline' Reveals Supposed Secrets of 'Iron Chef America'
As the most frequent judge on Iron Chef, permit me to clear up a few things:
Who gives a f--k whether the Iron Chef is chosen on the spot; whether somebody with Mario's shape is standing in while Mario himself is somewhere in Spain or Del Posto; or whether Mark (a fine martial artist who does backflips on the stage to amuse the rest of us) really is the Japanese chairman's grandson or newphew?
When you watch the Japanese ancestor of ICA, do you believe the polymorphously perverse chairman is truly a Japanese nobleman who lives in a castle with three Iron Chefs. (You shouldn't: he's a Japanese actor who played Jesus in the first Japanese production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." ) As I may have mentioned before, who gives a f--k?
The important thing is the cooking! And the cooking happens right in front of the audience and the judges in the span of exactly one hour. I've never seen that one hour extended or interrupted (as is all the TV frippery at the start and finish). Kindageeky (just above) has it pretty much as I've guessed it; the producers would do better to explain the secret ingredient and knowledge of it more frankly--to stifle the more extreme forms of skepticism. Listen to Kindageeky.
The food is nearly always good, even if it doesn't meet my two overall tests--would I actually pay for this dish, and would I ever want to eat it again? To my surprize, at least one-fourth of the dishes we're expected to eat are good enough to find a place at any modern American restaurant in this country. And there's nothing fake about it. Winning on Iron Chef is a very special and particular skill, and not necessarily the sign of a fine chef. Tracy Des Jardin, for example, is a wonderful cook who has done poorly on both Iron Chef and Next Iron Chef. And there have been others like Tracy.
One of my favorite American chefs (from the Berkeley-Oakland megalopolis) once asked me, gently, how I can believe in the value of fast cooking. All of us these days prize slow food, not as an ideology or formal organization, but as a belief that so many wonderful things (including, for example, real barbecue and peaches ripening on their trees and aged Scotch and wine and cheese) require lots of time and attention. In exchange, they yield incomparable sensual experiences; all of them make us all extremely happy when they're done right--and slow.
Yes, but contests like Iron Chef are something else--an entertainment that just happens (unlike, say, Top Chef) to show us some of the special skills of some of the finest American chefs. As Vogue's food critic, I get to eat at pretty much any restaurant in the world I wish. But the standard is sometimes set by Iron Chef. I've never eaten a Foie Gras Chawan Mushi that actually transported and transfixed me as the one Morimoto made on Battle Someting or other--maybe duck. (Even the version at his own restaurant and a version I enjoyed at a modern Chinese restaurant in Beijing didn't compare. And I don't think Morimoto remembers how to make the ICA version.) Not only would I pay to eat that dish again, I would pay double or quadruple, if I could charge it to Vogue.
I know that the Food Network has narrowed it focus and its audience over the past ten years, and the result is too often disappointing. But with ICA, they've figured out how to lure a general TV audience into a fascination with great, modern American food. There's nothing else like that on television.
See more comments by jsteingarten »
Recent Posts
jsteingarten hasn't written a post yet.
Recent Favorites
jsteingarten hasn't favorited a post yet.
Recent Polls
jsteingarten hasn't answered any polls yet.
Recent Quizzes
jsteingarten hasn't taken any quizzes yet.
Recent Comments | Response to Comments
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
This post will not make me popular. Is DiFara's transcendent or merely epiphanic? As a professional food critic, I can report only on food I have eaten. I have visited DiFara's just twice, once two years ago and again about ten months ago--both times mid-week and mid-afternoon. And both pizzas I ordered were banal or worse.
I consider pizza among the most important foods on Earth, for reasons I have written and would be happy to write again and again, but not right now. And so when I stumbled upon another series of disappointing peans to diFara, I finally could not longer stiffle my continual instinct to increase the volume of truth in the Cosmos rather than decrease it. No, that sounds grandiose. It is just that we all have the duty not to increase ignorance--in either the Dewey-decimal-sense of the word or the Buddhist sense, which may not be applicable here.
Adam, a long line means less in New York City than it means elsewhere. Can you imagine the people of a small town in the Sierras forming a long line to buy a banal (or worse) pizza? In New York City, Manhattan in particular, long lines form because they were long yesterday or because this morning they began long and consequently will not shrink for the rest of the day. A mathematician should study this. Or a statistician. But for now we can benefit from an analogy to the word "factoid," which became current, as I remember it, about four years ago, especially on cable news network stations. But it was used to mean, "a tiny fact" or "a fact of so little significance that if I called it a fact, you would consider me trivial, which of course I am."
The definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, the O.E.D., is far more useful:
factoid, n. and a.
n. Something that becomes accepted as a fact, although it is not (or may not be) true; spec. an assumption or speculation reported and repeated so often that it is popularly considered true; a simulated or imagined fact.
1973 N. Mailer Marilyn i. 18/2 Factoids+that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.
Naive and trustful as I am, I did not understand the application of the factoid principle to food until I stood in line for two hours to get into Tomoe Sushi on Thompson Street, which for several years had received a 27 rating in Zagat. The slices of fish were awkward, clumsy, warm, outsized, and while not "fishy" tasting, not remarkably fresh. It was time to return to Freud's analysis of the madness of crowds. Maybe someday.
For now, I'll summarize and abbreviate my view of what an ideal pizza should be: A pizza is a flatbread with a sparse but often intensely-flavorful topping, usually of Italian origin, especially in its olive oil. It is not an edible platter for Italian cold cuts, cheeses, and marinated, roasted vegetables. It is a flatbread, a wonderfully delicious, yeasty flatbread baked on a hearth; the hearth can be the stone or metal floor of an electric or gas deck oven, but small logs of wood burning on a stone surface are preferable for both flavor and temperature, which ideally should vary between about 600 dg. F. at the hearth and 800 or 900 dg. in the air above it, just right for finishing the flatbread in 90 to 120 seconds so that the dough underneath the pizza is crisp and charred; the top and topping are burnished and bubbling; and the dough in between is more chewy than crunchy or bready; and the rim of dough around the circumference is puffy and crisp and shot through with bubbles of air. (The Italians call it the cornichone, which sounds like the French corniches, the three highways that curve above the Riviera. The crust should have the assertive taste of roasted, yeasted, refined wheat.
This pizza, this flatbread, is little different from the first yeasted bread ever baked, on a stone--perhaps three thousand years ago in Egypt, which is why I become sentimental and even teary whenever I consider pizza in its very heart and essence.
I don't become teary or sentimental at DiFara's. Di Fara's is the Tomoe Sushi of wood-baked yeasted flatbread.
A good pizza is a flatbread with
'Nightline' Reveals Supposed Secrets of 'Iron Chef America'
As the most frequent judge on Iron Chef, permit me to clear up a few things:
Who gives a f--k whether the Iron Chef is chosen on the spot; whether somebody with Mario's shape is standing in while Mario himself is somewhere in Spain or Del Posto; or whether Mark (a fine martial artist who does backflips on the stage to amuse the rest of us) really is the Japanese chairman's grandson or newphew?
When you watch the Japanese ancestor of ICA, do you believe the polymorphously perverse chairman is truly a Japanese nobleman who lives in a castle with three Iron Chefs. (You shouldn't: he's a Japanese actor who played Jesus in the first Japanese production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." ) As I may have mentioned before, who gives a f--k?
The important thing is the cooking! And the cooking happens right in front of the audience and the judges in the span of exactly one hour. I've never seen that one hour extended or interrupted (as is all the TV frippery at the start and finish). Kindageeky (just above) has it pretty much as I've guessed it; the producers would do better to explain the secret ingredient and knowledge of it more frankly--to stifle the more extreme forms of skepticism. Listen to Kindageeky.
The food is nearly always good, even if it doesn't meet my two overall tests--would I actually pay for this dish, and would I ever want to eat it again? To my surprize, at least one-fourth of the dishes we're expected to eat are good enough to find a place at any modern American restaurant in this country. And there's nothing fake about it. Winning on Iron Chef is a very special and particular skill, and not necessarily the sign of a fine chef. Tracy Des Jardin, for example, is a wonderful cook who has done poorly on both Iron Chef and Next Iron Chef. And there have been others like Tracy.
One of my favorite American chefs (from the Berkeley-Oakland megalopolis) once asked me, gently, how I can believe in the value of fast cooking. All of us these days prize slow food, not as an ideology or formal organization, but as a belief that so many wonderful things (including, for example, real barbecue and peaches ripening on their trees and aged Scotch and wine and cheese) require lots of time and attention. In exchange, they yield incomparable sensual experiences; all of them make us all extremely happy when they're done right--and slow.
Yes, but contests like Iron Chef are something else--an entertainment that just happens (unlike, say, Top Chef) to show us some of the special skills of some of the finest American chefs. As Vogue's food critic, I get to eat at pretty much any restaurant in the world I wish. But the standard is sometimes set by Iron Chef. I've never eaten a Foie Gras Chawan Mushi that actually transported and transfixed me as the one Morimoto made on Battle Someting or other--maybe duck. (Even the version at his own restaurant and a version I enjoyed at a modern Chinese restaurant in Beijing didn't compare. And I don't think Morimoto remembers how to make the ICA version.) Not only would I pay to eat that dish again, I would pay double or quadruple, if I could charge it to Vogue.
I know that the Food Network has narrowed it focus and its audience over the past ten years, and the result is too often disappointing. But with ICA, they've figured out how to lure a general TV audience into a fascination with great, modern American food. There's nothing else like that on television.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I lived in Midwood for 30 years and started going to his shop in the 1980s. Back then he served up a mundane greasy slice to say the least and the interior was exactly the same minus the green paint, of course. If you grew up in the neighborhod like me you would never have imagined that he would become a pizza connoisseur's dream.
I had a Di Fara "experience" yesterday. I must admit his technique has evolved into an art form. I only wish I had the pizza when it was hot as I had to rush my wife and baby home as they had been sitting there for an eternity.
I am more in awe of the respect this man gets. Where else can you find a crowd of 30 people wait two hours for a pizza pie?
If you want great pizza, imho, go to Nino's pizza on 3rd Avenue ant 92nd Street in Bay Ridge. My favorite there is the Sofia Lauren which has whole slices of tomato with a sprinkling of garlic.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@foodismylife. I'm glad to hear A. Mano in Ridgewood is still putting out a good Napoletana pie. I didn't see it mentioned yet. When will that area be written up?
Ciao,
Paulie Gee
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
loved all the comments, i am among the group that difara's is a miracle here on earth
dom is a master to be cherished
i am spending my summer on the pizza patrol for the newark star ledger
our conceit is that we will taste pizza in all 21 counties of the state.
let me tell you someone said it best 90 per cent of anything is crap, i am a little more generous i say 15%.
so far i say mr nino's in harrison nj, semolina in milburn and a mano same consultant as keste ,in ridgewood are to die for
if you don't like di fara's it's you.
usually i say to each her own, but not here
good pizza hunting all
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I hope he raises the price of the slice to $10. Will still be the best damn pizza in the world and might keep out some of the riff raff.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
"Think about it, dumbasses. How could he possibly grow that much basil in the window?" LOL, nice!
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I agree with @jsteingarten.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I do not know anything regarding the technical differences between "flatbread" and "neapolitan style" ... nor do I know anything about proper cooking temperatures of pizza ... what I do know is that I truly love DiFara's Pizza. I am not a pizza lemming -- maybe just crazy?
First time I went to DiFara's was approximately 1 year ago. Having long cemented my favorites as Joe and Pat's (Staten Island) and Patsy's (Harlem), each of which is extremely easy to get into, and each of which makes an amazing pie. With two places like that, I really didn't the trek to, or wait associated with, DiFara's.
One day, however, I decided to go. I picked a weekend day (foolishly). The line was worse than expected, although, I guess, not out of the ordinary. It took 2 hours in line to place an order + 1 hour to get the pie. Beyond the wait, the experience itself was infuriating: I kept getting passed over in line for other people. The whole experience really pissed me off and definitley had me questioning my sanity. Finally, we got the pie -- a square pie. While I really wanted to hate it, I didn't. I didn't love it either. Nonetheless, I left interested in returning to try the round pie that I had seen so many others get.
Two weeks later, a friend and I went again. This time it was a weekday. The place was near empty. The place was empty, so I could watch the rituals associated with getting a pie at DiFara's that have been well documented elsewhere (i.e. slowly and methodically stretching the dough, the application of the sauce and cheese, the scissors cutting the basil). It was captivating, and really added to the overall experience, and likely, the taste of the resultant pizza. Following a 30 minute wait, we received the pie. It was nothing short of astounding. Truly amazing. Yes, it was messy as hell, oil, but wow -- it was definitely one great pizza. I've been back twice since, and have had similar visits to the 2nd visit -- nothing short of amazing.
As a final side note, one weekend I went to Difara's the day before going to my all time favorite, Joe and Pat's. This time, however, when I went to Joe and Pat's, and to my unpleasant surprise, I no longer liked their pizza!!!! Mind you, nothing had changed. The crust was still superb, the sauce still had a sweet, fresh flavor, the cheese judiciously applied. It was just that .... the flavor couldn't compare to DiFara's. Oh well. (6 months later, I returned to Joe and Pat's, discovering, to my delight, that I still enjoyed it . . . I did learn, however, that I can't go to DiFara's before going there -- a comparison between the two simply isn't fair).
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
"The Italians call it the cornichone, which sounds like the French corniches"
Funny, to me, "cornichone" sounds a lot like "cornichon," which means pickle.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@steamsoldier - you would think that, provided you had HEARD of DiFara before, you would know that a loaded pie like that was a bad idea.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@jeffsayyes - not to disagree with calling him an artist (anyone who has been making pizzas like that for so long is definitely an artist), but he was probably spinning the pizza around like that because it was half garlic. Once out of the oven, its tough to tell which half has garlic and which doesnt. He was probably looking for a mark he put on the crust before it went in. At least thats how we do it where I work. Just one of many pizza maker tricks!
@jerkfaceirl - I believe the response we're all looking for is "Anyways..."
Hope everyone had some good pizza this weekend!
Alberto
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I wish I could've found this lovely guide before I went a few weeks ago...
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
Jeffrey St, you lost me at the definition.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
you know, his cutting method is pretty interesting... as evidenced in the video. He always does this... he looks at it, spins it a bit and finds right place in his mind, then slams the pizza cutter down what seems like just anywhere. Deliberately wherever he deems it. He really is an artist with the pizza.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@Teachertalk, If you like "foodie opinions" on pizza, you should not come on to this site.
"48 hours of dough rising" and "garlic picked by virgins at dawn" is the standard here.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
You guys take this shit way too seriously. - Napoli pizza is the only pizza, calling the stuff they server here in the states pizza is like calling a kebab a burger because it's meat between bread.
NOW ARGUE.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
Sorry, but FIVE DOLLAR SLICES AIN'T BROOKLYN!!!
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
I love a foodie difference of opinion as much as the next guy, but I wish Jeff's tone had been a little less huffy and a little more respectful. Adam wrote a great post--one with humor, humility, and passion--and somehow those strengths were lost in Jeff's criticism of DiFara. Perhaps the hour (3:19 a.m.) led to the less-than-generous tone of the rebuttal. But I know which of the two (Adam or Jeff) I'd rather invite to dinner! (Generosity of spirit always wins the day...)
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
Locked in a room full of ravenous, 'brazenly aggressive' locals scares me more than not getting any pizza to be honest...
FP
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
If Dom had a line,maybe he wouldn't have one.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
"The 90 to 120 second fire time you mention is likely to leave you frustrated in an oven with 600°F on the floor and 800°F to 900°F reflecting from the dome...."
I shudda never let you near that laser thermometer, PBlogger.
Ciao,
Paulie Gee
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
Why are you being an asshole if you tell people to not cut in line? Even if you are nasty about it.
This post from "overheard in New York" pretty much sums up my feelings:
That Should Be on a Sign at the Airport
Tourist counting her group, which is clogging sidewalk:
Carla? Has anyone seen Carla? Okay, Marie? Marie?
Passerby, interrupting:
First, let me thank you for visiting our city. We appreciate it. Second, get out of the fucking way.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@jsteingarten
I, too, am interested to learn specifically what you did not like about the 'banal' Di Fara pizza?
The 'neapolitan ideal' that you mention, at some length, is a world away from the sort of pizza that Dominic DeMarco makes but does that necessarily make for bad or 'banal' pizza?
Did its failure to meet your, perhaps unrealistic, expectation (based on unfair comparisons) colour your opinion of what would otherwise be considered an excellent pizza in its own right?
I say that only because your ideal seems to be very focused on the aesthetics and technical aspects of making pizza rather than flavour. This makes me wonder if it is truly *your* opinion or simply repackaged 'verace pizza' manifesto; the latter perhaps bringing your Di Fara assessment into 'factoid' territory?
Apologies if that seems a little harsh. I must confess that I have never tried Di Fara (I'm in the UK)
The passion and variety of opinion surrounding Di Fara is fascinating to me but until I actually taste it myself, my own thoughts are, at best, those of a distant spectator.
FP
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
Jeffy S,
Thanks for the comment, always nice to see you here.
My good friend PIzzablogger sort of summarized what I was coming here to say. The only thing I have to add is this...
You said "For now, I'll summarize and abbreviate my view of what an ideal pizza should be: A pizza is a flatbread with a sparse but often intensely-flavorful topping, usually of Italian origin, especially in its olive oil. It is not an edible platter for Italian cold cuts, cheeses, and marinated, roasted vegetables....
This pizza, this flatbread, is little different from the first yeasted bread ever baked, on a stone--perhaps three thousand years ago in Egypt, which is why I become sentimental and even teary whenever I consider pizza in its very heart and essence."
Well, unfortunately, there is no "ideal" pizza for anyone but yourself. You are narrowly classifying pizza (at least I think you're describing neopolitan pizza, something that obviously can't be done.
For the same reason I don't prefer Chicago Style Deep Dish pizza, I don't go to Chicago deep dish joints when i'm in the town. You should probably stop going to a New York style pizzeria if that's the style you don't like, yes? Seems like it would solve everyone's beef.
Regardless, professional food crtitic or not, you should get the points of cooking more accurate if you are going to include them on your post. PizzaBlogger already corrected you on them, I will just go on to say that it is a cornicione, and it has little to do with the french.
What i'm saying is, we're pizza people here Jeff. We are way passed the days on slice where we narrowly jam definitions of what pizza "should be" into peoples heads. It's very clearly different for everyone, including yourself.
If you don't like what Dom is doing I politely suggest that you join the rest of the masses that Adam is instructing and just don't go. It makes the line shorter for the rest of us.
PG
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@jsteingarten: speaking for myself, I don't think anyone posting their own opinion makes them unpopular.
My opinion is that pizza, in particular the Neapolitan style pizza your post seems to indicate is the style you prefer, is most definitely not a flat bread. Speaking only from my own limited first hand baking experience, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, a true flatbread most often is not yeasted and is of a thickness more consistent with a tortilla or of Matzo bread. Pizza, and the Neapolitan style which gave rise to its popularity, is a progression from flat bread into another bread related product entirely. Even yeasted flatbreads almost always have a much different thickness factor and textural deviations from what would constitute a great pizza crust, particularly the style of pizza you talk about as your ideal pizza.
Speaking from my humble opinion only, I have never once had a great pizza crust whose primary flavor component was yeasty.
Now, I am merely a servent of pizza and my postings here and travels to eat pizza are to enrich my knowledge of pizza, which is nowhere near the knowledge of people like Adam, Ed or many of the people who post here. I am certainly no expert nor do I claim to be. However, you are the one claiming to be a professional food critic. The 90 to 120 second fire time you mention is likely to leave you frustrated in an oven with 600°F on the floor and 800°F to 900°F reflecting from the dome....that's not an ideal temperature for a 90 second fire time, with your cited ceiling temperature of 800°F to 900°F a better range for the floor temperature needed to aid in the oven spring and heating properties required to not only thoroughly cook the undercrust and toppings in 90 seconds, but to transform a properly made and handled dough ball from a topped skin into a properly cooked pizza with the wonderfully delicate, large air hole filled cornicione I think we both agree is something worth swooning over.
Don't get me wrong, you can cook a great pizza in the temperatures you cited, but it will likely take longer than 90 to 120 seconds to get exactly what you are looking for at those temps.
DiFara is certainly not Neapolitan style pizza and Dom's crust is certainly not like the truer Neapolitan styled efforts found at somewhere like Motorino, Keste, etc. Dom's pizzas are also a bit of a friggen mess. I would definitely prefer more restraint when it comes to how much of each ingredient he tops his pizzas with. But banal, or worse?
Banal, adjective: lacking originality, freshness or novelty.
The "originality" of DiFara, or any pizzeria for that matter (especially the current trend of pizzerias focusing on what is arguably the oldest style of pizza) is open for debate. It most certainly fits the novelty bill. How many pizzerias have only one person who cooks the pizza and has been doing so for four decades? Novelty is something new or unusual, and Dom is most definitely unusual in the world of pizza. As far as fresness, whether a person prefers Dom's heavy hand or not, freshness is something Dom's pizza definitely had on my one visit there. The pizza I had definitely delivered a hearty dose of fresh, and intense, flavors.
What exactly made Dom's pizza banal to you? Did you get one of the burnt ones it appears he may be serving from time to time or was it something else?
Too much time to type and clog up Adam's blog with more of my blathering on a Saturday morning! Have a great weekend everyone.
All You Need to Know About Di Fara, 2009
@jsteingarten Very well stated. Especially for 3:19 in the morning. You are obviously a man with a passion for pizza. So where do you get this ideal pizza you speak of?
Ciao,
Paulie Gee
Recent Posts
jsteingarten hasn't written a post yet.
Recent Favorites
jsteingarten hasn't favorited a post yet.
Polls
jsteingarten hasn't answered any polls yet.
Quizzes
jsteingarten hasn't taken any quizzes yet.
This post will not make me popular. Is DiFara's transcendent or merely epiphanic? As a professional food critic, I can report only on food I have eaten. I have visited DiFara's just twice, once two years ago and again about ten months ago--both times mid-week and mid-afternoon. And both pizzas I ordered were banal or worse.
I consider pizza among the most important foods on Earth, for reasons I have written and would be happy to write again and again, but not right now. And so when I stumbled upon another series of disappointing peans to diFara, I finally could not longer stiffle my continual instinct to increase the volume of truth in the Cosmos rather than decrease it. No, that sounds grandiose. It is just that we all have the duty not to increase ignorance--in either the Dewey-decimal-sense of the word or the Buddhist sense, which may not be applicable here.
Adam, a long line means less in New York City than it means elsewhere. Can you imagine the people of a small town in the Sierras forming a long line to buy a banal (or worse) pizza? In New York City, Manhattan in particular, long lines form because they were long yesterday or because this morning they began long and consequently will not shrink for the rest of the day. A mathematician should study this. Or a statistician. But for now we can benefit from an analogy to the word "factoid," which became current, as I remember it, about four years ago, especially on cable news network stations. But it was used to mean, "a tiny fact" or "a fact of so little significance that if I called it a fact, you would consider me trivial, which of course I am."
The definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, the O.E.D., is far more useful:
factoid, n. and a.
n. Something that becomes accepted as a fact, although it is not (or may not be) true; spec. an assumption or speculation reported and repeated so often that it is popularly considered true; a simulated or imagined fact.
1973 N. Mailer Marilyn i. 18/2 Factoids+that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.
Naive and trustful as I am, I did not understand the application of the factoid principle to food until I stood in line for two hours to get into Tomoe Sushi on Thompson Street, which for several years had received a 27 rating in Zagat. The slices of fish were awkward, clumsy, warm, outsized, and while not "fishy" tasting, not remarkably fresh. It was time to return to Freud's analysis of the madness of crowds. Maybe someday.
For now, I'll summarize and abbreviate my view of what an ideal pizza should be: A pizza is a flatbread with a sparse but often intensely-flavorful topping, usually of Italian origin, especially in its olive oil. It is not an edible platter for Italian cold cuts, cheeses, and marinated, roasted vegetables. It is a flatbread, a wonderfully delicious, yeasty flatbread baked on a hearth; the hearth can be the stone or metal floor of an electric or gas deck oven, but small logs of wood burning on a stone surface are preferable for both flavor and temperature, which ideally should vary between about 600 dg. F. at the hearth and 800 or 900 dg. in the air above it, just right for finishing the flatbread in 90 to 120 seconds so that the dough underneath the pizza is crisp and charred; the top and topping are burnished and bubbling; and the dough in between is more chewy than crunchy or bready; and the rim of dough around the circumference is puffy and crisp and shot through with bubbles of air. (The Italians call it the cornichone, which sounds like the French corniches, the three highways that curve above the Riviera. The crust should have the assertive taste of roasted, yeasted, refined wheat.
This pizza, this flatbread, is little different from the first yeasted bread ever baked, on a stone--perhaps three thousand years ago in Egypt, which is why I become sentimental and even teary whenever I consider pizza in its very heart and essence.
I don't become teary or sentimental at DiFara's. Di Fara's is the Tomoe Sushi of wood-baked yeasted flatbread.
A good pizza is a flatbread with