Pizza worth waiting 50 years for

It’s a lucky pizza-lover who has a place like this in the ‘hood.

Dom de Marco's been making pizza for more than 50 years. Source: The Pizza Sow

Who doesn’t love the idea of having an Italian pizzaolo with more than 50 years of dough-shaping and oven-wrangling under his belt as your local?

You’ll be feeling more than a tad jealous of Frank Pinello, then, after this week’s episode of The Pizza Show, when he pays a visit to Di Fara in Brooklyn (watch Tuesday October 10 8.30pm on SBS Viceland, or catch up via SBS On Demand)

Pinello’s exploring his own neighbourhood in this week’s episode, and there’s plenty of Brooklyn pizza royalty sharing their passion for pizza. Pizza and wood.

If you had to name the secrets to great pizza, you might say the flour, the toppings, the oven or the pizza-maker’s skill. But wood?

You might think again after hearing Anthony Falco talk about cooking with a wood-fired oven. “It's like, the light of the sun that was stored by the wood. And then it's released through, like, chemical reactions. It's super rad,” says Falco, one of the team behind Roberta’s, Pinello’s first stop and one of the places where he learnt his own pizza skills. “It's important to have a good wood guy. It's a key ingredient, right, just like the water... or the flour or the dough,” say Pinello.

Fired up: the wood-fired oven at Roberta's. Source: The Pizza Show

Roberta’s serves up the kind of pizzas that would look right at home on an Australian menu – charry edges, inventive toppings.

But if Roberta’s is new Brooklyn, there’s also plenty of pizza worth eating in old Brooklyn.  

Pinello describes Falco as Roberta’s “pizza czar”, but Falco and Pinello both tip their head to two other established pizzerias – Mark Iacono of Lucali and  Domenico “Dom” De Marco, of Di Fara.

De Marco opened Di Fara Pizza in 1964 after emigrating to Brooklyn from Italy; he’s slowing down a little these days, but with help from the family's next generation, he still turns out plenty of pizza. And it’s pizza worth lining up for.

“I think I make good pizza. Then once I come here, I'm like, ‘Okay, I guess not’,” says Iacono inThe Pizza Show.

Given his own joint is a local legend, that's praise. 

Love pizza? Don't miss The Pizza Show Tuesdays 8.30pm on SBS VICELAND and then on SBS On Demand.