(Photo: Zach Desart)

When Di Fara’s Dom De Marco, the septuagenarian pie man, was shut down by the Department of Health last year, the one thing that irked him above all else was their insistence that he wear a hat. “I’d only wear a hat if I were bald,” he told slice.com’s Adam Kuban. And yet, there he was one day, unbald and wearing a jaunty chapeau of the type you might associate with the driving of vintage roadsters through the English countryside. Maybe it was just for show, but the pizza-slinging fashion plate seems to have sparked a trend. Take, for instance, Francis Garcia of Artichoke Pizza, who can be seen nightly wearing a white linen driving cap pulled low over his eyes. Former Resto chef Ryan Skeen was spotted recently wearing a similar model but backward at the General Greene where he consults. And the crew of Curry Ya (pictured), a new Japanese curry shop on East 10th Street, consider themselves out of uniform unless they’re wearing their regulation black mesh lids. When asked about this, Marc Williamson of J.J. Hat Center in the Flatiron district admitted he hadn’t noticed whether his customer base was suddenly rife with formerly hatless pizzaioli and Japanese cutlet cookers. Predictably, though, he’s in favor of the trend. “A cook could wear a do-rag, a baseball cap, or even a little paper hat,” he says. “But if you’re wearing an $85 Borsalino, it shows you care enough to want to look good while doing your thing.” As for the classic chef toque, Williamson doesn’t predict a comeback anytime soon.

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• Table of Contents: Aug 25, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!