East Village Pizza Joins Lineup of Top-Rated Pizzerias at Dave Portnoy's One Bite Pizza Festival

Patch New York covered East Village Pizza's selection for Dave Portnoy's third annual One Bite Pizza Festival with the straightforward clarity that local news does best: this is a neighborhood restaurant doing something the whole city is paying attention to. Being named to the festival lineup at Randall's Island Park on September 13, 2025 placed East Village Pizza alongside the most respected pizzerias in New York, and Patch's coverage brought that news to the East Village community that has supported the restaurant since Frank Kabatas took over in 2003.

The One Bite Pizza Festival is not a participation-trophy event. The restaurants selected represent the genuine top tier of New York pizza, chosen based on quality, reputation, and the kind of sustained excellence that builds a loyal following over time. For East Village Pizza, which started as a neighborhood slice shop and grew into a media fixture through genuine product quality rather than marketing spend, the selection validated something the regulars have always known.

Frank Kabatas has built the restaurant on a set of principles that are simple to state and difficult to execute consistently: make the dough right, make the cheese fresh, bake everything with care, and stay open late because New York never stops being hungry. The 72-hour cold fermentation process for the dough is non-negotiable. The mozzarella made in-house every morning is non-negotiable. These standards apply at 3PM on a Wednesday and at 4AM on a Saturday with the same force, which is why East Village Pizza has earned the kind of coverage and recognition that brings it to events like the One Bite Pizza Festival.

Patch's coverage reached the local readers who make up the core of East Village Pizza's daily customer base — the residents of the East Village, Alphabet City, the Lower East Side, and surrounding neighborhoods who have made the restaurant part of their regular routine. For those readers, the festival news was confirmation of something they had been telling friends and visitors for years: if you want the best pizza in Manhattan, 145 1st Ave is where you go.

The festival itself, held annually at Randall's Island Park, draws thousands of pizza enthusiasts from across the New York metropolitan area. The 2025 edition was the third installment, and the format remains compelling: a concentrated afternoon of sampling, comparing, and voting from a lineup of the city's most respected pizzerias. East Village Pizza's presence in that lineup — alongside restaurants that have been building their reputations for decades — is a reflection of where the restaurant stands in New York's pizza landscape after more than twenty years of operation under Kabatas.

If you missed the festival and want to experience the pizza that earned East Village Pizza its spot in the lineup, the restaurant is at 145 1st Ave in Manhattan, open daily from 11AM until 3AM and until 5AM on Fridays and Saturdays. The full menu includes slices from $4.99, whole 18-inch pies, the signature double-stacked pizza at $46, heart-shaped pizza in four varieties, Sicilian square pizza, gluten-free options, and calzones. Order online or call (212) 529-4545.