All jokes aside, it was raining so we hurried into this renowned pizza shrine as we were downright reverent.  And hungry.  Inside there were easily twenty people standing in relative silence patiently waiting for their pizza.  It turns out that a stroller works pretty well as a people plough so we managed to ‘excuse me’ our way up to the counter without too much trouble.  My first welcome surprise was that the woman that took my order was pleasant and smiling.  Much  different than the ‘Pizza Nazi’ attitude I was fully prepared to endure.  I quickly placed our order for one regular pie.  That’s right… a regular pie.  No messing around with fussy toppings and risk upsetting the delicate ingredient proportion equilibrium.  I wanted to let the pizza master be the pizza master and just do a pizza the way he does it best. 

We then proceeded to wait

And wait.

But all this waiting is a typical experience.  Dom makes each pie by hand so the production output is a little on the slow side.  But you can tell by watching him that he cares about each pizza and about each ingredient that goes into it.  It was so refreshingly surprising to see how nice Dom and the two daughters that were working with him that day were to all of the customers.  They really didn’t have to be.  Us people will still line up for this superb pizza regardless of the staff’s mood.  But the women were kind and pleasant to everyone.  Even those that checked on their order’s status multiple times.  And Dom, as he snipped fresh basil and sprinkled a handful of shredded grana padano onto each finished pie, made a point of asking, “Is this yours?” to the customer standing at the counter.  Even that little gesture of the master looking the person in the eye, connecting his pizza to the person and then passing his creation on to them I thought was a very nice touch.  It is obvious that Dom cares about his pizza.  And he cares about his customers. 

The Di Fara customers, speaking of, are the wild card of the whole experience.  Waiting for a Di Fara pizza is serious business.  People travel long distances to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this tattered little shop.  And the combination of aching feet, politeness fatigue, and ravenous hunger can put nerves on edge.  For the most part everyone on the afternoon we went was great.  Civil, polite and obedient in observing the social contract.  But there were a couple mumblers in the bunch.  “I can’t believe it is taking this long.”  “I was here before that guy, why is he getting a pizza?”  Etc.  Etc.  All to be expected for waits this long on an empty stomach.  It only becomes awkward when the mumblers turn to you and try to drag you into their low-decibel monologue.  Best to be prepared to smile and nod sympathetically to whoever looks at you.  And then pretend to be distracted by something else.

The wait for our pizza ended up being an hour and twenty minutes.  After an hour on the train.  And then an hour on the train to get home.  A total of three hours and twenty minutes of pilgrimage operational process.  All for a pizza eating experience that lasted maybe fifteen minutes.  Sound crazy?  Definitely.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

The Di Fara pizza is most certainly deserving of its reputation for being one of the very best in New York City.  So simple yet so transcendent.  The multidimensional crust the perfect base to a compilation of top-notch ingredients.  The center dough thin and chewy with hints of crispiness while the outer crust billows into pillowy sections of crispy crunch giving way to a chewy bread-like interior.  With bits of char scattered about as flinty taste counter-point.  And the three-cheese combination is perfectly balanced in composition and proportion.  The pizza’s melted base of both fresh and aged mozzarella gives the pie a good depth of character to build upon.  And the addition of a handful of grated grana padano scattered when the pie comes out of the oven is pure genius.  As the pizza is eaten, the diner is able to experience the grana padano as it struggles through its transition between two states.  From its raw state of unadulterated sharp saltiness to the oozy comfort of the cheese in melted form, each bite has the potential to capture not three but four cheese taste characteristics.  For the price of three! 

All of the cheeses and the sublime dough are accompanied by taste accents from top-notch ingredients.  The tomato sauce is San Marzano.  The olive oil is good Italian stuff which Dom drizzles, nay… douses, the pie with both before and after the oven.  Again expanding on the potential of taste character from both fresh to cooked.  And the addition of fresh cut basil at the end caps the whole taste experience off with a lovely herbaceous high note and aroma that would be otherwise muted and largely lost if the herb was allowed to bake with the pie.  All of these high quality ingredients expertly composed and transformed to form a delicious pizza whose taste is greater than the sum of its parts.  That’s Di Fara pizza magic.  And totally worth the trip.

But, after personally witnessing Dom DeMarco’s sublime pizza operation for myself I think that I have figured out the secret to the whole Di Fara’s experience.  Wanna know the secret?  Here it is:

There is no secret.

There is no ancient coal oven imparting mystical smokey-charred taste.  There is no secret recipe.  Sure the dough is great but there are other pizza places in town that make great dough.  And, really, dough ingredients are so simple that there is not much room for adjustment.  There is no secret ingredient added behind the scenes.  Heck, you can stand there and watch the guy make every single pizza.  No, there is nothing that Dom DeMarco knows that you don’t have access to yourself. 

But that is just it.  The thing that makes Di Fara so good is that they use only great ingredients to make their pizzas.  Great tomatoes, great cheeses, good olive oil and fresh basil.  And they don’t skimp.  Anyone could use these same ingredients.  On the long train ride home I was thinking that any crummy pizza place in the city could change up their operation and make killer pizzas very similar to Di Fara’s.  But they don’t.  Why not?  That is what is so maddening about it.  If you have a good pizza oven and some basic business insight, great pizza that people will clamour for is within your reach.  But very few pizza makers understand this.  So people like me have to travel from all over the place out to sleepy Midwood, Brooklyn for some of the very best pizza in the city.  In the country possibly.

Dom DeMarco’s genius is a straight forward one.  Just use great ingredients to make great pizza and the rest of the business equation will fall into place.  That is what he does every day that Di Fara’s is open.  Pizza is Dom DeMarco’s soul focus.  His passion.  His meditation.  And maybe, now that I think about it, that is the actual secret behind Di Fara’s.  Hidden in plain sight for everyone to see.  The tiny details that make up the process.  How the dough is treated, the careful proportion of sauce and cheese, the length of time a pizza spends in the oven.  How often it is turned while baking.  The right sized handful of grana padano and just the right motion to scatter it.  These sorts of little motions and details that have a cumulative effect on the final product.  All of which can, of course, be learned and recreated.  But it is more than just learned behavior that Mr. DeMarco uses in making his pizzas.   He actually cares about each and every pie that moves across his counter is and shaped by his hands.  And he cares about the people eating his pizzas.  His taking the time to speak to each person that he hands a pizza over to is a subtle, yet very powerful part of the experience.  It is obvious to any attentive observer that he loves what he does.  And it is evident in his pizzas.  Maybe that is the real secret behind Di Fara’s Pizza.  A pilgrimage worth taking.

Sure there were people there and the mood of gallerists seemed pretty upbeat.  But I think what I mean by ‘underwhelming’ is that it all, for the most part, felt pretty safe.  Sure there were a few new and interesting things here and there but most of the art felt like I had seen it before.  Actually, some of it I had seen before.  One of the shows most heavily represented artists this year was Robert Rauschenberg.  The most impressive piece of which was a 35 million dollar wall-sized monster at Gallerie Faurschou in Copenhagen.  Now that I am thinking about it I am wondering what made the piece so impressive.  It’s size?  It’s price?  Or it’s artistic merit?  Ah, the psychology of buying, selling and owning art.  A conversation for another time.  Regardless, Rauschenberg is a blue ribbon artist to be sure.  But definitely not ‘new’.  And safe in that the investment value of his art has long been established.

Also in the ’safe’ category were familiar looking pieces by well known artists.  Or should I say by well known artists’ assistants.  There was a wall of Damien Hirst skull pieces at Paul Stolper, screen printed in glittery metallic inks.  Affordable butterfly kaleidoscopes.  And a few pieces scattered about the show by Hirst and American art powerhouse Richard Prince that looked like a patchwork of several past series all thrown together.  A jumble of pills, dots and skulls or nurses and cowboys.  Take your pick.  Safe investments all.

British art-diva-with-issues Tracy Emin was, as usual, very visible with pieces at several galleries, but all that I saw was neon and embroidery from past years.  Of course it is possible that maybe I missed something, but I worry if it seems like an artist’s output starts to dwindle once they are able to pay their rent on time.  And speaking of artists that have fizzled, why have I not seen anything from Matthew Barney lately?  Sure the Cremaster Cycle was an epic amount of work.  And he scored creative volcano Bjork in the process, but when can we see some new stuff?

Also oddly absent from the festivities were work by both Takashi Murakami and patron saint of the New York art world, Andy Warhol.  As prolific as both of these artists are/were, and as revered as they continue to be… where was their work?  The only piece that came close was a Warhol / Jean-Michel Basquiat collaboration painting.  Was it that all of their work is so tied up in private collections or auction houses that no galleries have any pieces?  Maybe that’s a good sign for Warhol at least.  But for Murakami it would signal the same issue that I fear has overcome Emin and Barney.  Once life gets posh the new work output slows down.

Thankfully there were a few gems in the rough-and-tumble of the show.  Hernan Bas continues to grow in visibility, popularity and acclaim with pieces on display at several galleries.  My favorite of which was ‘For Isadora Duncan’, a little painting, pictured at left, at Victoria Miro Gallery.  Unfortunately it was from the long-ago days of 2005, but it was charming and really lovely.  Another very nice painting that we came across, shown at the top of this post, is ‘Untitled’, 2009 by artist Carla Klein at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York.  We were told that Klein travels around the United States and takes photographs.  She then prints them herself, joins the photographs with adjacent shots and then proceeds to paint from the patch-worked image, printing blemishes and all.  The resulting paintings tend to produce haunting images of austere landscapes.  An America that, despite all of our best efforts, is relatively devoid of meaningful content.  But, nevertheless, an America of our own making.  If trudging up and down all the aisles of the Armory show were meant for me to only come to be introduced to this one artist, then it was worth it.

One last highlight was a piece by artist Sue Williams entitled ‘Age of Aquarius’.  Represented by ‘hot young thing’ New York art powerhouse 303 Gallery, Williams’ painting was a vibrant eye-catcher.  Spending any amount of time in front of it made your brain think that the image was actually out in front of the canvas.  Vaguely reminiscent of Warhol’s camouflage paintings, Williams’ work knows how to make the most of visual stimulation.  My only critique would be that her forms tread relatively close to the forms in the early work of Inka Essenhigh, a personal fave.  Both artists push and pull the boundaries of anthropomorphic association with their blobby form-making.  Sure their work differs in thesis and direction but a visual similarity is there.  Also interesting that they are both represented by 303.  Either way, Essenhigh’s work has developed in a different direction, they are both great artists and 303 is a very good gallery.

The Armory Show always ends for me in a tumult.  There is so much art to see in such a short time that I am left in a mix of emotions.  Redundancy and disappointment annually take their toll.  But thankfully, there are always a few pieces, artists and galleries at the Armory Show that give me hope and keep me coming back for more.  What I would like to see, though, is the organizers of Armory foster an excitement about art and the show that overtakes the entire city.  Not just the Piers.  The argument could be made that if you are not an art-scener you might not have known that there was a major art fair happening in New York City that weekend.  Where are the art installations in public spaces, the parties in hotel lobbies, the strategic placement of guerrilla art by as yet unknown young artists, the celebrity art-buying shopping sprees or the retail brands trying to get a piece of the art-frenzy action?  I am sure it is there in some fashion.  But it never feels as energetic or as urgent as the scene surrounding Art Basel Miami.  But then again, this is New York.  The only things we feel urgently are that our dinner at that new restaurant had better be superlative or that our co-op board approve our renovation plans.  Well… maybe a few other things.  But my point is that I think the Armory Show could do a lot more to bolster its reputation as one of the premier art fairs in the world.  But for now it is what it is.  And I will continue to meet Brian and go check out all of the art at the Armory Show.  Tracy Emin could not have said it better than with her neon piece… ‘I Keep Believing In You”.

I will say, though, that I had an initial hint of something ‘more’ hidden beneath the surface vacuity with the opening sequence of the statue of Jesus being flown in by hellicopter.  This scene was too strange, too particular to not have some deeper meaning.   And, lets face it, focusing the camera on a flying statue of Jesus could be something of a shortcut to metaphoric reference.  Nevertheless, it was not until later post-movie reflection that I started to understand this scene.  Though Jesus was leading the way through life, Marcello was too easily diverted from this ’straight and narrow’ course by the slightest glimpse of a woman.  An encapsulation of the lustful human condition?  Or is it the ‘Italian condition’?

It was not until further reading after the film that I realized that Fellini had thought out the sequence and setting of the movie quite extensively.  The scenes supposedly fit into the framework of seven ‘days’, evening and morning.  And the entire film is a study of the decay and moral devolution of modern culture.  Hmmm… did I miss something?  Evidently Fellini expended some substantial brain power on this one.  And obviously, it deserves another look from me.  From what I can discern in the ink spilled about La Dolce Vita, there is a lot of material that can be mined from within this film.  A welcome change from the vacuity of most films today.  But I will say this – I find the typical poster image for this film, of the blond bombshell Sylvia, to be misleading.  But… maybe that is the point.

The vibe I get from reading through Braeburn’s website is that it is a restaurant trying to bridge several genres at once.  A “casual, yet elegant fine dining restaurant,…”.  This, to me, signals a restaurant with an identity crisis.  Restaurants are pretty much either casual or elegant.  It is very hard to be both.  And ‘fine’ dining…?  We’ll see about that.  So what is Braeburn?

For starters, the restaurant space is nice enough.  From the street the interior is glimpsed through window display vitrines full of standing logs.  Birch maybe?  As if secretly peering into a hobbit party in the enchanted forest.  Upon entering one is greeted near the door and then ushered into the bar area. All fairly handsome in dark wood and stone.  So far so good.  But the dining room is just a step to the north, and this is where I see the first clues that there is a discrepancy between what Braeburn says and what Braeburn is. 

Braeburn’s name, taken from the apple variety originating in New Zealand, suggests mental images of warm sunlight on rolling hills patchworked with orchards and farms.  The dining room builds on this reference with reclaimed dark wood on the walls as well as wooden tables and chairs.  And the large painting of a bucolic farm setting on the back wall pushes the reference needle into ‘literal’ territory.  Too bad the painting fell into the ‘almost but not quite there’ category of artistic merit for me.  And also a shame that it is the unabashed focal point of the entire space.  Not a good sign.  But… overall the dining room has a nice ‘casual’ feel to it.  But ‘elegant’?  I don’t think so.  And it only took a glance upward to put the icing on my thinking ‘cake’.  Exposed interior air conditioning units do not exactly say ‘elegant’.  But really, regardless of the level of refinement that Braeburn has labeled itself with, the dining room is a pleasant environment to have a meal in.  Not to mention that we were thrilled to get a table for eleven.  And a spot for a stroller.  Pretty nice!

But in this food town it is food that is king, elegance or not.  And Brian Bistrong, chef and co-owner of Braeburn, has quite the resume.  Most notably his time as saucier at Restaurant Bouleyand chef de cuisine at Bouley Bakery.  The title of ‘executive chef’ is great and all… but heck, I am executive chef in my kitchen.  I think it is being given positions of responsibility by the big names in the business that carries the most weight.  So… eager to sample some of his food we happily dove into a study of the brunch menu.  I immediately zeroed in on the ‘Quail Dog’.  It seems to have gotten a lot of press which can be a good sign.  Also, it sounded inventive… if a bit curious, so I gave it a go.  The boss opted for the ‘Lobster Knuckle Sandwich’.  The friend sitting next to me ordered the burger and other people picked from all over the menu so we were ready for a show.

Unfortunately what showed up at our table was a bit less than what I had hoped for.  The boss’s ‘Lobster Knuckle Sandwich’ was essentially a smallish lobster roll with a pile of coleslaw nearby.  It all tasted fine but I guess that I was hoping for a lobster dish that might have had its roots in tradition, taken the typical lobster roll as it’s inspirational starting point, and then gone further with the dish and blown my mind with flavor.  This did not.  It seemed no marked improvement on other lobster rolls that she or I had had in the past.

Our friend’s burger was pretty straight-forward.  Served with cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato along with a pile of fries    He said it was pretty good.  Hmmm… pretty good.  I am not sure, being only a block away from the Spotted Pig and its legendary burger, that ‘pretty good’ is going to cut it.  His and my fries, both nicely crisped and sprinkled with salt and chopped parsley were exceptionally done.  But still.

The biggest let-down, though, was reserved for my ‘Quail Dog’.  Unlike the version pictured above my ‘Quail Dog’ was served on a brioche roll with ’smoked’ mustard.  Also on the plate was a little dish of diced ‘fall apple relish’ as well as a metal vessel loaded with fries.  Oh and also a little ramekin of ketchup.  My first thought was ‘why did they prop up my fries in a bowl and put my friend’s fries directly on his plate?’  A bit inconsistent.  Upon further relfection I wasn’t sure I understood the restaurant’s plating concept.  Why so many vessels?  Why not put my apple relish directly on the dog in the roll?  Is putting separate elements of a dish in their own container Braeburn’s idea of ‘elegant’?  To me, if the plating of an element feels superfluous or forced, such as fries awkwardly propped in a metal bowl, then don’t do it.  Sometimes adding to the experience of a dish means to not clutter it.

But enough about plating, I had my Quail Dog to contemplate.  Now I am a big fan of sausage and all sorts of force-meat products.  But, as with my plating opinion, I think a preparation or process should be used only if it adds to the flavor and experience of an ingredient.  Having this quail in dog form did not do that for me.  The pieces of quail inside the dog casing were unfortunately a little dry.  And a little big for my liking.  Sausage works because it is typically fattier off-cuts of meat that have been ground into bits and loaded with seasonings.  Quail is not very fatty.  So biting into a larger piece of the bird within the dog gave me no juiciness.  And big pieces of meat leave little room for spices to uniformly flavor every bite.  I ended up feeling that I was eating an under seasoned de-boned quail packed into a tube on a bun.  Of course I ate every bite.  But in the end it seemed like a lot of effort put into a preparation that did not do much for the taste experience.  My ‘fall apple relish’, though, was very good.  Little minced cubes of apple, cornichons and shallot (maybe?) all mingled together with fresh dill.  A nice accompaniment to any ‘dog’. 

Overall our meal at Braeburn was good and we had a very nice time with our friends.  But I couldn’t help thinking that so much of what we ate was close but just missed the mark in one way or the other.  Whether it was the concept of the dish, its seasoning or plating, many of the elements that we tried were good but left me wishing that they would have been developed further.  Of course this was just brunch, of which a restaurant’s full breadth and depth cannot be judged.  I will have to return at some point to try Braeburn’s dinner menu.  But… it has been my experience that seeing how a restaurant executes the little things, even the afterthoughts that get put on a brunch menu, is a good indication of how it treats the big things on its roster.  A consistent eye towards concept, flavor and enhancement of ingredients is the mark of a great restaurant.  Regardless of its atmosphere.

 

restaurant where “we would feel comfortable dining at any day of the week”, and

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am a pizza addict.  A promiscuous pizza floozy.  If it was socially acceptable I would eat pizza every day.  Along with sushi every day.  Pizza and sushi every day.  While listening to the Smiths.  O.k… that’s a step too far.  But suffice to say that I love pizza.  Of course upon hearing this you might think that my pizza bar is set pretty low.  “He will eat any ol’ pizza and be happy with it,”  you’re thinking.  And this is pretty close to the truth.  BUT, just because I have a vast breadth of pizza experience does not mean that my pizza discernment lacks depth.  On the contrary.  I have a great love for pizza.  And because of that love I am an expert at knowing what constitutes a great pizza.

In terms of Sal & Carmine’s, they had me with the first slice.  And hundreds of slices since. 

Now let me just say that Sal & Carmine’s is a bit different than, say, Lombardi’s, Grimaldi’s or Patsy’s.  There is no 100 year old coal fired oven to lend its aged flinty smoke to the taste complexity of the crust.  Sure they have been in business for a long time, since 1959 if I am not mistaken, but there is nothing sacred or storied in their space or their equipment I don’t think.  Heck, they even moved a while back.  Maybe I am wrong.  But from what I can tell Sal & Carmine’s space seems pretty typical of New York’s many pizza joints.  It is small.  Only a few tables.  It sells whole pies but mainly slices.  It’s menu and its range are limited in that it has only a pizza oven, a counter and fridge to make and hold the dough and a cooler for drinks.  That’s pretty much it.

But the pizza that comes out of Sal & Carmine’s oven is quite frankly some of the best in New York city.  Easily within the top ten.  Possibly within the top five.  I am not sure what their secret is but Sal & Carmine’s crust has a character all its own that subtly sets it apart from other pizzas.  The dough of every pizza is multi-dimensional.  Thin and flexible in the center.  Then bubbling up into pillowy heaps toward the outer edge.  As if driving across the Great Plains the fields on either side of the road were covered in cheese with the Rocky Mountain foothills and muscular peaks of crust rising before it.  The crust itself, instead of charring to a hard dark outer shell, somehow maintains a light coloring of flour, slicked here and there with some of the cheesy oil that has found its way through a ‘mountain pass’.  When bitten into the crust has a slight bready give to it and then a satisfying toothsome chew.  With just enough salt in the dough to keep the taste buds dancing.  Thick in places, yet airy and pliable, a real pleasure to eat.  This is not crust that will get left behind by a picky pizza eater.

Sal & Carmine’s toppings are all fairly straight forward.  There is nothing fussy here like fresh basil or buffalo mozzarella.  But everything from the aged cheese to the pepperoni is good.  Really, though, it is the dough that takes all of the ingredients and toppings and elevates them to something very special.  I usually eat only the simple plain cheese slices so that I can savor the crust all the more clearly.  But whatever you order you can be certain that it will be good.  The one detail that Sal & Carmine’s does add to the diner’s experience is that they tie each pick-up order pizza box with a few wraps of red and white kitchen string.  Which I love.  I carefully untie the string and save each one I get.  Not only is it pretty but I have also then gone on to use it to tie the odd roast or bird. 

So what makes Sal & Carmine’s pizza so good?  The quality and taste of their pizza is simply astounding considering its humble home.  Pizza this good should be served to hundreds every day in a large restaurant.  But maybe that is the point.  Sal & Carmine’s is a family operation.  Brothers Sal and Carmine Malanga have been making pizza together for a long time.  Unfortunately Sal passed away last year.  But Carmine and grandson Luciano Gaudiosi (with the help of a couple other family members) continue to carry on Sal’s tradition and make the pizza every day.  So maybe it’s that family understanding, the familiarness of shared experience and values, that gives Sal & Carmine’s its outstanding flavor and character.  Its pizza dough mojo.  Sal & Carmine’s is run by a family that is not so concerned with growing the business, making lots of money or opening a second restaurant.  They just want to make seriously good pizza.  Which they do very well.

Butcher a whole chicken.  Cut up the meat and refrigerate.  Roast the bones with a mirepoix of vegetables.  Make a stock out of the roasted stuff.  The next day strain the stock, toss the bones, spent veg and any aromatics that you added but save and mince any good meaty bits you can pick out.  Add the meaty mince back to the stock since there is no need for it to be ‘Thomas-Keller-clear’.  Reheat the stock and poach the saved chicken meat and then in the same stock whatever cubed root vegetables you have on hand.  In this case a potato, a turnip, some butternut squash and some carrots.  Also saute some chopped onion, celery and minced garlic in a good bit of butter.  To that add enough flour to make a roux situation happen.  Once nutty brown, add back in three quarters of the stock and some half and half or light cream.  Wisk and simmer on low for a while to thicken.  Pour this into the chicken and cubed veg mixture.  Add chopped parsley, tarragon and thyme along with ground pepper and a little more salt than you think you will need.  Mix it all up and put it into a buttered pie tin.  Run to the store and buy more pie crusts when you realize the filling won’t all fit into one pie.  Artfully cover mixture with crust dough while poking reserved chicken wings out through the middle.  Just like St. John Restaurant pokes a marrow bone out from their meat pies.  Put in the oven at 400F (205C) for almost an hour.  Serve while fondly recounting stories of eating the little frozen pot pies your mom used to buy from the freezer section of the grocery store.