Tag Archives: pizza

Di Fara Pizza- Brooklyn

4 Sep

We found ourselves in Brooklyn with a whole lot of time to kill and an appetite for adventure and good food. I had recently read about the famous Di Fara Pizza so we walked about 30 minutes to grab a slice.  It was named Best Pizza in NY by a few of my most trusted Nomming resources, including my fave, New York Magazine.

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Di Fara has been owned by Dom DeMarco since 1964 and is a legend in Brooklyn. He was there the day we came in, making pizzas one after another.

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When we walked in, we were incredibly ignored by the pizza crew behind the counter.  I wasn’t sure if there was some process that I didn’t know about to order, but after some time, finally someone made eye contact.  

I had read that it can take hours to get pizza, but they weren’t too busy on this mid-afternoon Saturday.  BUT, they didn’t have a lot of by the slice options either, so we both went for square (I was hoping to try one of each, Sicilian square and classic round… but oh well).

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The place is tiny, pretty run down, hot, and perfectly old Brooklyn.  You could probably lick history off the walls (though I wouldn’t recommend it).

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I went with the artichoke.  

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It was so hot that it was nearly impossible to eat for a good 30 minutes.  And the tin foil was so stuck to the bottom that it required a lot of finger nail scraping to make sure we didn’t murder our fillings.  But once it cooled down, I really enjoyed it.

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Mike got a margarita slice.

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Which looked far too gooey and mushy, but wound up being really great.

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The slightly caramelized, crisp crust was impressive seeing as though the top was nearly soup.

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We both really enjoyed our slices, but was it the best pizza we ever had?  Mehhhh.  It was damn good, but probably not worth schlepping all over Brooklyn for, nor waiting hours.  But I’m glad we went.  I actually much prefer classic round pizza to Sicilian, so I wonder how my opinion would have been changed had we tried that. Perhaps next time! If we’re in the neighborhood…

Total Nom Points: 6.5 out of 10

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Cookshop

10 Dec

As mentioned in my previous post, after the Dewar’s tasting, we needed food, desperately.  So we went across the street  to Colicchio and Sons.

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They told us to grab seats at the bar and people should be getting up any minute.  We hovered for about 5 minutes before feeling like we were just being plain rude… so I pulled out the iPhone and did some OpenTable-ing for the neighborhood.

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When I saw Cookshop (on 10th Ave and 20th Street) had a reservation open for 4 just 20 minutes later, we were out of there.  (Though we all vowed to return)

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We took the 5 minute walk and were seated immediately.

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This place just felt good inside.  Like someone put in a enough effort to make it feel special without making it feel overdone or uninviting.  Unfortunately, it was horribly dark.  Forget taking pictures… we could hardly read the menus!   (Apologies in advance for the overly dark pictures).

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Even though we had just sipped our way through the scotch tasting, we ordered some more drinks to keep the buzz going. We all had a good laugh when we realized that the locations that we had just learned about at the tasting were listed right on our menu.

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We went for mixers, however…

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We started with pizza.  Description sounded good…

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Upskirt was decent…. but it was just okay.

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The highlight was the gnocchi.   It was a special that night and included veal meatballs and brussels sprouts.    It was so perfectly pillowy.  We all mentioned how much we enjoyed this dish.

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Lori ordered what sounded a like a humble dish of eggplant parm.  But when it came out, not only was the portion HUGE, but it was delicious.

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Kevin ordered the “Lamb Three Ways.”  It was good… but not fantastic.

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Mike chose the porchetta, and he was nice enough to share some crispy cracklin’s with the table.  And we were all thankful for that!  It was delicious.

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I got the duck with lentils and squash.  I enjoyed the squash very much, and the duck was pretty good (though I wish the skin was a little crispier).

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We were absolutely game for dessert.

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Lori chose the Chocolate-Raspberry Sundae.  I am not a big sundae person at a restaurant, simply because I always prefer baked goods unless I’m going to an ice cream store specifically.  Lori seemed to agree and said this was just okay.  Nothing special.

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Mike and I both chose the Saigon Cinnamon-Pistachio pudding with a chocolate cookie, salted whipped cream & candied sicilian pistachios.  It sounded PERFECT.  But I found it lacking in flavor… I could hardly taste the pistachio.  Lori LOVED it, however, which is pretty funny since she did NOT like the Milk Bar ice cream with a similar flavor profile and I LOVED it.

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Overall, I thought Cookshop was delicious.   I think this is the kind of place I would prefer for brunch, however, dinner was very good.  I highly recommend the gnocchi!

Total Nom Points: 7 out of 10

For Lori’s full review, check it out here!

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Room Service Pizza

20 Oct

I was fortunate to be invited out to our LA offices to meet the rest of my new work team.  I had only been to LA once before, and I was at a conference and then got a great inside tour by my aunt that time, however, I was never on my own schedule.  This time, I spent a week working and then extended through the holiday weekend, and Mike got to join me for his first time in LA.

One night, I was certainly still on East Coast time and really couldn’t pull myself out of the hotel room to find dinner… so I got room service.  The hotel (Le Parc Suites, which was quite lovely by the way) had a “fine restaurant” so I figured it couldn’t be too bad.  They were out of pretty much everything, however, so I wound up ordering a pizza.  As soon as I ordered it, I regretted it.  I mean… I’m from New York… and I ordered PIZZA in LA?  Hmmmmm.

It came and it smelled really great though.

Lots of good mushrooms… crackly cheese.

Ok… it had potential.  The upskirt looked a bit weak though.

And that was where it failed.  The crust was incredibly lackluster.  The toppings were good, but the crust was just too distractingly plain to be worthwhile.  Tasted a bit like fast food pizza crust.  I wound up eating the mushroom, saucy, cheesy goodness with a fork in a way that only you can do alone, in a hotel room, in a city across the country, before falling asleep at 8pm local time.

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