Grimaldi's - 19 Old Fulton Street / 718.858.4300 / http://www.grimaldis.com
DiFara - 1424 Avenue J / 718-258-1367 / http://www.difara.com
L&B Spumoni Gardens - 2725 86th Street / 718.449.1230 / http://www.spumonigardens.com/
The classic New York slice may have been born in Manhattan, but Brooklyn is where it retired. That's not surprising. Thanks to stratospheric rents and the deterioration of close-knit, old-world neighborhoods, Manhattan has become increasingly inhospitable to classic pizzerias, which thrive most on remaining unglamorous and unassuming. There are still keepers of the flame, like Lombardi's on Spring Street and the relatively new (but still classically styled) Artichoke, but the tradition has for the most part moved on, leaving behind a sea of watered down imitators banking on the city's good reputation. The original Ray's, for example, moved to New Jersey in 2003 - dozens of knockoffs still remain.
Like all the boroughs, Brooklyn is equally overrun with these kind of shoddy impersonators, but its size and profusion of isolated corners has allowed some old standards to survive unchanged for years. The Bronx has Arthur Avenue for its Italian food, but Brooklyn's offerings are far more spread out. Respectable pizza is easy to find, but there are other treasures whose slices make them a destination in themselves, drawing people to neighborhoods that, for outsiders, normally wouldn't merit a second look.
These legendary pizzerias are defined largely by word of mouth, banking on years of accumulated reputation and bragging by competitive locals. A search for classic Brooklyn pizza reveals something startlingly close a consensus, five spots whose names come up again and again: Totonno's. DiFara. House of Pizza & Calzone. Grimaldi's. L&B Spumoni Gardens. Venerable names that tingle with the standard trappings of the classic pizzeria: coal ovens, hungry locals, cheaply painted walls covered in goofy memorabilia.
But even these institutions can't last forever. House of Pizza & Calzone, in Carroll Gardens, was bought out by new owners in 2004 and has, according to the word on the street, never been quite the same. Totonno's in Coney Island, the oldest of the bunch with 85 years in operation, burned nearly to the ground in March. It will be back soon, the owners assure, but this kind of tragedy is a reminder that the stalwarts of this old-fashioned style are a quickly fading breed.
Nowhere is this transience more apparent than at DiFara, in Midwood, where 72-year-old Domenic DeMarco runs an entire operation nearly by himself. He shapes, tops and cooks the pies, all in plain view, while his sons supply dough and fresh helpings of toppings and cheese. There's a zoo-like atmosphere to all this: crowds press the counter, gabbling for slices, as DeMarco's unbelievably calloused hands pull pans directly from the oven.
The crowd, which seems constant throughout the day, pushes the wait time past an hour, but also adds a necessary community element. People speak to DeMarco, calling him Dom, and he talks back, granting a friendly old-fashioned familiarity. The slice itself is intensely flavorful, drenched in olive oil and a dusting of fresh basil, with cheese, sauce and hunks of tomato, all imported from Italy. The crust is thin, singed with dark spots and bubbles, a hallmark of the fresh dough that he considers a necessity. There's hardly any room to eat in the tiny restaurant, where early arrivers hold down a few scant tables, but experiencing the pie on a bench and chess board table in the middle of nearby Ocean Parkway has a certain local charm.
The pace is much more relaxed at L&B Spumoni Gardens, a spacious outdoor complex in the relatively residential Gravesend. Out in the sticks there's far more room to stretch out, with a parking lot, tent-covered outdoor restaurant and sprawling picnic table setup. The restaurant started in as a horse-drawn lunch cart in 1939, and still retains a modest chow line feel; on a Sunday afternoon the atmosphere was suitably suburban, little leaguers, cops, families, all huddled over slices served on paper plates.
Here, each element of the slice is surprisingly bold. The cheese, the sauce, even the crust, each has a singular expressiveness, framing the slice as an interesting chain reaction of declining sharpness. Both the Sicilian and Neapolitan slices have their own style - the square dominated by its brimming sauce and a light smattering of cheese, the other more standard, thick with mozzarella. The eponymous spumoni is also delicious, creamily homemade and studded with pistachios.
Of the three, Grimaldi's is the only real tourist destination. This may owe something to its location, sandwiched between Red Hook and Brooklyn Heights in the historic South Ferry area, but also the owners' eye for attracting business. With its huge, ordered line and dozens of tightly packed tables, the place feels like an attraction, despite the decaying neon green sign out front. The line routinely stretches around the block, but is kept moving at a surprisingly quick pace.
The pizza here feels a little too comfortable, sparsely topped and burnt at the edges, with slices scrapped in favor of small pies. The walls bulge with pictures, of Frank Sinatra and other Italian-American touchstones, creating an exaggerated pizzeria atmosphere, super-sized and loaded with tourists hungry for an authentic experience. But by now Grimaldi's represents more of a simulacrum of this experience than the real thing, accommodating tourists by playing to their expectations, an efficient enterprise serving thousands of customers a day.
Yet this fulfillment of an image is, beyond the taste and ingredients and local loyalty, what keeps landmarks like this so consistently alluring. As pizza grows increasingly complex, they stand out as iconic reminders its simple roots.
by Jesse Cataldo
[Photos: Becca Moore, Daniel Krieger, wEnDaLicious, Robyn Lee]