I was fired from an NYC pizzeria — now I own the slice joint

The New York Post has told a lot of comeback stories over its long history, but few have the clean narrative arc of Frank Kabatas and East Village Pizza. The headline says it plainly: he was fired from the pizzeria he now owns. What the headline cannot capture is the full weight of what that journey actually required.

Kabatas arrived in New York from Turkey in 1997 at age 23. He had seen pizza in movies. He had never eaten it. He had certainly never made it. His first job in America was as a delivery driver for East Village Pizza, a corner pizzeria at 145 1st Ave in Manhattan's East Village that had been serving the neighborhood for years. Six months in, he was fired.

He does not tell this story with bitterness. He tells it as the first chapter of something that had to begin with failure before it could arrive at anything worth having. After losing the delivery job, Kabatas stayed in New York, kept working, and kept watching the restaurant industry. He studied pizza with the intensity of someone who knows that mastery is not optional — it is the only path. In 2003, six years after his firing, he purchased East Village Pizza. The man who had been too inexperienced to keep a delivery job now owned the building, the ovens, and the recipes.

What he built over the following two decades is the kind of business that New York food journalists profile and New York diners defend with the passion usually reserved for sports teams. East Village Pizza under Kabatas became known for its 72-hour cold-fermented dough, its daily fresh mozzarella, and two signature creations that do not exist anywhere else in the city. The double-stacked pizza — two full pies baked into one with extra cheese between the layers — became a phenomenon covered by PIX11, FOX News, and pizza industry publications nationwide. The heart-shaped pizza, introduced in 2019, sold out immediately and has been available year-round ever since.

The restaurant has been featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America, NBC New York, and dozens of other outlets. Kabatas himself has appeared on Fox and Friends to demonstrate dough-tossing on National Pepperoni Pizza Day. His Instagram account — built entirely on the energy and authenticity of a man who genuinely loves what he makes — grew to 1.7 million followers, making East Village Pizza one of the most-followed independent pizzerias in the world.

None of it was inevitable. The New York Post story captures the improbable quality of the trajectory: a 23-year-old arrives from Turkey knowing nothing about pizza, gets fired after six months, spends years building toward something, and ends up with a restaurant that the New York Times writes about and Instagram users follow by the millions. It is a story about New York as much as it is about pizza — about what this city does to people who refuse to let early failure become a permanent verdict.

East Village Pizza is at 145 1st Ave, open until 3AM Sunday through Thursday and 5AM on Fridays and Saturdays. If you want to taste what perseverance produces, the $4.99 cheese slice is a reasonable place to start.