For many Manhattanites, Midwood, Brooklyn seems so far away that it might as well be on another continent. In fairness, the neighborhood, which is home to a quirky assortment of Orthodox yeshivas and Chinese and Pakistani groceries, can be a good hour from midtown on the Q train, and not much more convenient if you’re driving in Brooklyn’s stop-and-go congestion. Even with two good friends to distract us last week, our car ride, punctuated by treacherous traffic circles and near-misses with Access-A-Ride vans, was near 25 minutes from central Park Slope. But the promise of arguably New York City’s best pizza kept us seatbelted and moving slowly towards our destination: Di Fara Pizza.

Purveyors of among the most talked-about pies in Gotham, Di Fara (or Di Fara’s, depending on your mood) is one of those magical places that elicits wistful sighs from New York pizza aficionados. The pizzeria earns such near religious devotion because it does pretty much one thing: crank out pie after pie from the restaurant’s deck oven. Dominick DeMarco, the owner and sole pizzaiolo, is renowned for working slowly and deliberately, often ignoring bothersome interruptions like telephones and customers as he makes each pizza by hand and to order, with little to no help from others in the shop. Each topping is added individually, and small steps, including adding a few final few snips of basil off a fresh bunch, grating grana padano and splashing a bit of olive oil on a slice or a pie, are taken with care, and never rushed. Attention to detail (not to mention the casual indifference to patrons) has resulted in not only deservedly famous pizza, but infamously lengthy lines. As word of Dom’s doughy miracles has spread, two-hour evening and weekend waits have become all too common.

But these days, if you have heard anything about Di Fara, it is probably that it was shut down for several weeks early this summer by the Department of Health as part of the Department’s program of stepped-up enforcement following the Greenwich Village Taco Bell Department of Health (DOH) fiasco. As part of a negotiated re-opening settlement with inspectors, Dom was forced to don a plastic protective hat and gloves, and to keep the doors and window to his diminutive storefront closed while cooking. The good news is that the new rules haven’t changed the quality of the pizza; the bad news is, without the ventilation from the window, the smoke and heat inside the shop are now nearly intolerable, particularly during New York’s steambath months of July and August. After ten minutes waiting for a pie, you half expect to see a betoweled Bette Midler emerge from the crowd and start singing to the crowd.

Despite the steam and interior haze, my dining companions Vince and Ms. Fribbles had hardly any complaints about their experience–and neither did I. One problem we did find was that our thin pizza had slightly too much char on its crust. Indeed, much of the crust was inedible and black. This was a surprise to us all, as Dom’s most frequent movement in the open kitchen is his constant shifting and lifting up the bottoms of his cooking pies to check for even doneness. Can we chalk the blackened crust up to the tactile distraction of his DOH gloves? Regardless, a little char is a minor quibble with pizza this good. His sauce was as sweet and addictive as always–a happy multiplex marriage of canned and fresh San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and no doubt a secret ingredient or two. The cheese, a combination of fresh mozzarella, buffalo mozzarella, and parmesan, melted effortlessly around and into the sauce. Of course, Di Fara’s offers a panoply of toppings but really, why clutter up a classic?

Di Fara’s also produces a deep-dish, Sicilian-American style pizza in addition to the thin Neapolitan, and we decided to experiment by ordering one of these square pies with porcini mushrooms, one of Di Fara’s special toppings, ones Dom claims to import (in grand Gotham quasi-legit tradition) himself, and that he can be seen fishing out one-by-one from a large jar that sits on the kitchen’s back counter. The square pizza requires almost twice the preparation time as the Neapolitan pie, as the shell must be pre-baked, but like everything else at Di Fara’s, it worth the wait. We won’t be the first to say it, but Di Fara’s square pies are better than the round ones, with their chewy, spongy interior and crunchy crust. Textural contrast doesn’t get any better than this, and given that these pies are accompanied by a richer sauce than the round version (rumors have it that the square pie’s sauce is simmered with pancetta), it is not hard to nominate Di Fara’s Sicilian-American pie as the best square in the city. For us, though, what made the dish transcendent were the mushrooms, left totally uncooked, then added after the pizza emerged from the oven, imparting the whole dish with a distinctive marinated bite.

Unexpected touches like the zingy tang from that marinated porcini mushroom illustrate the upside of DeMarco’s attention to detail. And Dom makes Di Fara what it is: a true New York gastronomic institution that provides a glimpse of a true artisan at work, even if he does begrudgingly wear rubber gloves–and less often, the hat–as he grinds cheese and pokes pies. Sure, it might be a trek for a lot of New Yorkers, but with the Q train stop directly across the street from the shop, there is no excuse not to bring a book to keep you occupied while you queue, eat a slice or two, and then collapse in a happy pile as the subway doors close behind you.

Di Fara Pizza, 1424 Avenue J, Midwood, Brooklyn, 718-258-1367.