Every time I’m in New York, I follow largely the same routine. Cab from JFK to the loft in Bushwick, wash the sheets (Stones Throw’s East Coast headquarters isn’t an Ian Schraeger type joint, but it works), make my way to Taralucci E Vino for an espresso, check out the East Village Record stores and then call Edan. Why Edan? Well, I’ve been trying to convince him to do an album with me for a very long while and, even though that looks to be a long way off (though still a distinct possibility), he and I often share good conversations about music, life, “the business,” and food.
He’s been telling me that a day trip to Di Fara’ss Pizza was in order, but, in New York, without a car, Grimaldi’s is just so much easier. But, two weeks ago, on a short layover in the City on my way back to LA from Portugal, the timing worked out. I met Edan and Lif on the Q Train (quite surreal that we happened to be on the same train at the same time), and, Scrabble Board in hand, we made our way to Di Fara’s for the inevitable hour long wait for one of its legendary pies.
The end result? An hour into our Scrabble game (and an hour and a half after placing our order), the proprietor’s daughter politely informed us that our pie never hit the oven. “I called out that we had no wild onions,” she said. Uh.. ok. A half hour later, Lif is so clearly ahead in the game that Edan and I can’t possibly catch up, we’ve discussed the collapse of the rather limited music industry that we knew (and how exciting that was for optimists like ourselves), we’ve mapped out the song that the duo promise for the second Whitefield Brothers album, talked more about that album-to-be, and are so damn hungry that anything would taste like manna from heaven.
But the pie is a masterpiece. And, watching the slow, steady approach that the maestro takes with each pie, I think that there is an analogy between Di Fara’s Pizza and Now-Again. Somewhere.