New York-style pizza in North Carolina? This Cary restaurant has a secret weapon
It’s not like I’d never have the chance to meet another New Yorker.
That’s what I told myself when I moved with my family from Long Island to the Triangle in 2021. We knew the saying: CARY stands for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. And after a couple years living in the Triangle, I can tell you I can’t go to the grocery store or to a doctor’s appointment without hearing the telltale accent.
“New York?” “Of course!”
Another New York native who moved South, Gregory Norton craved more than hearing familiar accents in the grocery store. The owner and founder of Cary’s Di Fara Pizza Tavern wanted to give all of us transplants a slice of home.
Actually, more than a slice. The whole damn pie.
“We tell everyone that we’re in Cary, but it really feels like New York,” Norton told me last week. “Because everyone here’s from New York, and the people that aren’t really appreciate the pizza.
“And they’re so nice. Everyone’s so nice! I still have to get used to it.”
Norton, who’s a part of the Brooklyn Di Fara pizza dynasty, was a union carpenter in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He’d take the train home with his toolbox, getting off a few stops early to squeeze tomatoes for sauce or make dough at the family restaurant.
Di Fara, started by Domenico DeMarco in 1965 on Brooklyn’s Avenue J, is consistently named the best pizza in New York. Even Anthony Bourdain declared DeMarco’s pies “best of the best.” DeMarco, who passed away last year, was Norton’s uncle.
Norton moved with his wife, Valerie, and children to North Carolina seven years ago, ready for a change. Eating his way around the Triangle, he couldn’t find a slice that felt like home.
He knew it was his job to change that.
“I went up to New York for a funeral and told the family, listen guys, I need pizza in my life. Do I have your blessing? And we opened up down here, no brainer,” he said.
A pizza crust secret weapon?
Norton strives to produce a slice identical to what the Brooklyn shop makes.
The only real difference between the two spots, he said, is his New York WaterMaker, a commercially sold filtration system that promises to make any water chemically identical to the water in any water system in the country. For Norton, that means getting Brooklyn, New York, water in Cary, North Carolina.
“I call it the stingray effect,” he said. “North Carolina water makes my dough look like it’s moving, and it makes the dough too flaky. It’s night and day when I use the New York water, and it might even be better because the water is always on point. And we’re not looking for anything less than perfect.”
Feels like home
My dad and I visited Cary’s Di Fara Pizza Tavern last week. When you get inside, you immediately feel the heat coming off the triple-digit-temperature oven as a Yankee game replays on the wall-sized television.
As New Yorkers (and at-home pizza makers), it’s really no different than stepping inside our own house.
We ordered half a regular pie (sauce, cheese and basil) and half a “Difara Classic Pie” with sausage, peppers, onions and mushrooms. A regular pie costs $27 while a specialty pie, such as the Difara Classic, costs around $35.
The small menu also features meatballs, calzones and garlic knots. The similarly small dessert menu features rainbow cookies, cannoli and Italian ices — all shipped in from New York.
The Di Fara logo, plastered on wall signs and T-shirts, features the D and F train subway symbols, round and orange with an arrow pointing downward.
Before even glancing at the menu, Dad asked our server how he could purchase that shirt. Those were the two subway trains he took to his high school each and every day.
Di Fara Pizza Tavern is located at 111 E. Chatham St. in Cary, open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and until midnight Thursday through Saturday. Visit their website at difarapizzatavern.com.
