Wearing Latex Food Service Gloves Just Doesn’t Feel Right

Taco Bell notwithstanding, if the mayor is not careful, perceived Health Department overinspection of DiFara may unravel his administration’s nannyism:

“Put it back in the oven,” Domenico DeMarco was told.

The godfather of Brooklyn pizzadom had just pulled one of his signature pies out of the same old gas oven he’s used since Mayor Wagner’s administration — the temperature cranked up, the way he likes it, to around 750 degrees.

With his bare hand, he sprinkled some extra cheese onto the piping-hot pie.

That’s when the health inspector cried foul. She was spying from the usual packed crowd of pie tasters that assemble daily at Mr. DeMarco’s landmark Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood.

“My customers, they want it the way I do it,” said the legendary 70-year-old pizza-slinger. “I use good cheese. Parmesan Reggiano! So, I told her that.”

The inspector was not impressed. “She made me put it back in the oven,” Mr. DeMarco said.

Then she made him lock the front door.

Busted! Barehanded. Again.

On June 4, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shut down Mr. DeMarco’s popular pizza parlor on Avenue J for the second time this year, citing “unsanitary conditions including mouse infestation, flies, and bare hand contact with food.”

“Having failed five of six inspections in the last 18 months,” the regulators concluded, “[Di Fara’s] inspection history indicates an unwillingness or inability to meet health code.”

. . .

At press time, the pizzeria remained closed, though Mr. DeMarco and his family had tentatively brokered a set of stipulations that would allow them to reopen by week’s end. Still, Di Fara’s patriarch stressed that he would not reopen until he alone was ready: “The last time they close me up, after they give me the O.K., I say, ‘Nah, I have to close a few days because I want to close.'”

Even locked-up, Mr. DeMarco’s place was an attraction. “All day long, they’re looking in,” he remarked, as passers-by repeatedly pressed their faces up to the locked glass door.

“We’re with you, Maestro!” one supporter wrote in magic marker across a Health Department “CLOSED” sign posted to Di Fara’s door. “DOMINICK FOR PRESIDENT!” scrawled another.

Location Scout: Di Fara Pizza.