In New York, Dominick DeMarco's 47-year quest to make the perfect pizza is living mythology. DeMarco works alone, stretching his dough, growing herbs on his windowsill.

Walking into DiFara's, his shop in central Brooklyn, one might be surprised by the ramshackle appearance. Even those who do not arrive expecting fanciness may be taken aback by the flimsy walls and the folding picnic tables.

But what surprised me most were the glaring inefficiencies of the master.

He waits first for an order before he stretches the dough, spreads the sauce, adds toppings at a laborious pace and, finally, gingerly, slides the pie into the oven, using only one of its four decks. After all this, he turns to sell a few slices, talk to customers, add up bills and give change.

I watched all this until eventually he turned to me, cracking a brief smile, and asked me what I would like. Recalling the stress on efficiency in my ­restaurant training, I kept thinking that in all that time he could have had another pizza cooking in the oven.

The modest and patient queue grew steadily and would-be customers stared at the slices of pizza they would have loved to eat if only someone were there to put them on a plate and take some money for them.

For entertainment I started thinking of all the things I would do if I were to help the gentleman run his shop. I would set all the toppings within reach so that I wouldn't have to walk three steps in a different direction every time I needed another ingredient. I would get all the boxes off the floor, so that I could move freely. I would do this, I would do that, I busied myself thinking, until I actually started to notice what DeMarco was doing, instead of the fact that he was doing it very slowly.

I noticed, for example, that only once the dough was stretched and sauced did he pick up a piece of cheese and grate it fresh by hand on to the pizza. Then he took three steps over to a Styrofoam box, where I noticed him extracting a second cheese, a ball of buffalo milk mozzarella that he imports from his home village in Italy. I noticed how deliberately he drizzled on the olive oil, lifted his wobbly paddle and slid his creation into the oven.

With the oven door open, he peered around inspecting the pies. He picked one, deemed it ready and took it out by hand. He went back with the paddle, removing a square pizza bubbling in its smoking-hot pan and gently pushed it off the paddle on to the counter by hand.

I have spent time with serious cooks, restaurant lifers, and I have never seen anyone purposely put their hand on a hot pan. Never. He has been doing this for a long, long time. I began to realise that there is nothing I would be able to do to help him run DiFara's.

He called out in a heavy, earthy voice: "Pizza. Plain pizza." I jumped to attention and reached for the tray but he asked me to wait. He turned back to his workbench, took a healthy chunk of Parmegiano Reggiano and slipped it into a mounted steel grater. He gave the handle a few vigorous cranks and came back to the counter with a heap of the fine cheese. "You need this," he said.

My first bite had an air of importance - not just because I was by now ravenous but because of the man's legend; because of the painstaking process I had just seen. The first thing was the cheese from DeMarco's native village. It was the very essence of fresh milk: mild with a soft, warm flavour that filled the mouth with its creamy sweetness. It was a flavour that was relentlessly round, having no sharp edges, reminding me that milk is the first food. I was thankful that the cheese was well made with a resilient texture that demanded steady chewing.

All the while, the tomato sauce did its work, lending a summery brightness. The Parmegiano added a pungent sharpness, the savour of age, a balancing note of gravity for a pie that was otherwise full of freshness and youth.

The crust, burdened as it was, held a satisfying chewiness without being tough. Around its toasty brown edges, I enjoyed a bit of crackle but it was the flavour of this crust, redolent of olive oil and the simple pleasures of salt and wheat, that lingered after everything else was gone.

The pizza was a masterpiece, challenging my expectations every moment with another flavour coming to the fore, another texture replacing the one before. I sighed, wondering how pizza could be so good.

After finishing, I went to talk to DeMarco about the bill. He paused for a moment, picking up my empty bottle of San Benedetto orange soda. He added the price of the soda and then paused again. "This is a great drink," he said finally, smiling.

I smiled and agreed as I realised why his pizza is so good. He sells this soda because he loves it. He flies in his cheese because he loves it. He stretches dough only after it's ordered because he loves it.

He is an old man. His work has not been kind to his body and he shows his 69 years. He has been going home with flour on his shoes for nearly half a century. He does not run a restaurant - he makes pizza because he loves it.

DiFara's Pizza: 1424 Avenue J (at East 15th Street), Brooklyn, NY 11230. Tel: +1 718-258 1367