On his second day in New York, Frank Kabatas stepped into East Village Pizza for the first time. As a child in Turkey, he’d eaten plenty of pide — a cheesy flatbread cousin of pizza — but he’d never been able to afford a proper slice. In 1997, when he was 23, he got a green card and decided to join his brother Mel in New York. Mel was working at the pizzeria, and he served Frank his first plain cheese slice.
“It wasn’t like it absolutely blew my mind,” Frank Kabatas said. “But I definitely did think to myself: I should have tried pizza sooner.”
For the next six months, Mr. Kabatas worked just about every job at the pizzeria, from bicycle delivery man to dishwasher to prep cook. After a verbal disagreement with another member of the staff, Mr. Kabatas said, he was fired. But he didn’t quit on pizza. He went to work for Ben’s Pizzeria in Greenwich Village, where he learned the secrets of baking great pies. Then he went to work for Domino’s on Long Island, where he learned the secrets of selling them.
In 2003, Mr. Kabatas and his brother borrowed $25,000 from an aunt in Turkey and bought East Village Pizza from its retiring owner. In the two decades since, they’ve made their pizzeria among the most popular in Manhattan — and on Instagram, where they’ve attracted 1.7 million followers.
Mr. Kabatas, 49, lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens with his wife, Melike, and two of their three daughters: 15-year-old Alisa and 11-year-old Sarah. Their oldest daughter, 18-year-old Eva, is a first-year student at Columbia University.
A QUIET MORNING Normal people take Sundays off, but pizzeria owners are not normal people. Sundays are my busiest days. When I wake up at 8 a.m., my mind is already racing, so I take a shower to relax. I check my texts to see if anything went wrong at the shop last night. Then I check my emails. If it’s not an emergency, I try to wait to respond. Melike and the girls get up before me on Sundays and have their own routines, so they’re often out of the house before I’m out of the shower.
TRAIN TIME, SCREEN TIME I have a car, but I prefer to take the train to work. I’ll respond to the messages I put off earlier, and I’ll start looking through my Instagram notifications. When I first started posting pictures of my pizza in 2013, other shop owners were laughing at me. I certainly didn’t expect it to become as big as it has, but I thought it would be a good way of showing off our great food.
When Instagram added videos and these big aggregator accounts started popping up, I realized that they needed a lot of content. A friend taught me how to record and edit videos, and my account started to take off. We hit a million followers during the pandemic. The only downside is it’s a lot to keep up with all the comments and messages we receive.
PARK BENCH BREAKFAST I get to the East Village around 10:30 and stop to get an Americano at MUD and a bagel from Tompkins Square Bagels. I grab a seat at a bench across the street from the pizza shop and think about the business: Should I make any changes inside or outside of the restaurant? What will I be posting about today? I have a couple of cigarettes and sit out there for about 45 minutes, getting myself mentally ready for the rest of the day.
FIRST PIZZAS, FIRST POSTS I walk into the store around 11:15 and check on the status of the pizzas. I like to see the first one of the day coming out of the oven to make sure it looks just right. If it is, I make a quick video for Instagram. The key with food videos is that you need good lighting. And a good cheese pull always helps too. I post the video right away because I need to make my rounds in the kitchen. I check the fridge and oven temperatures and make sure that all of our staff are at work and all our ingredients are in stock.
DESSERT FIRST I don’t usually eat lunch, but I do like to get a sweet treat before the lunch rush begins. I walk down the street to Gelatoville and get a scoop of Ferrero Rocher or hazelnut. The ice cream helps me cool off and relax before a hot afternoon in the kitchen.
THE LUNCH RUSH Around 2 p.m., we start to get really busy, and it stays that way through dinner time. I float around the kitchen, helping out where I can. Sometimes I make pizzas, but more often, I serve customers. The double-stack pizza is one of our specialties. It’s basically two pizzas baked on top of each other. I started working on it during the pandemic, when I was doing a daily livestream of myself making and baking pizzas. I worked on it for six or seven months. It took a while to figure out how to cook both pizzas without burning the bottom or leaving the top raw. On average, we make about 150 pizzas on a Sunday, and about five of them are double-stacks. When someone orders one, I make sure to bring it over to their table personally and cut it in front of them.
PAYDAY Sunday is payday for my staff. I have a little office in the basement below the kitchen, and I head down there around 5 to take a look at the books and start drafting the checks. That can take until 6 or 7 depending on the week. The late shift starts around then, and if everyone on the schedule has come in, I hand out the envelopes and get ready to go home.
WALK IN THE PARK We live about 10 minutes from Crocheron Park, and Melike and I grab a coffee and take a walk by the water for about 45 minutes. We like to catch up on our days and think about the next week. If the kids are home when we get back, we have dinner as a family. After we clean up, Melike and I will talk for a while on the couch or watch TV. I work in the restaurant seven days a week, so I don’t get that much time to watch shows. I like Jimmy Fallon, so sometimes we’ll play an episode of “The Tonight Show” we missed during the week.
I make my final post or story or reel for Instagram, and then I get ready to go to bed. If I’m lucky, I’m asleep by 11. But more often than not, I am up late thinking about the pizzeria and the week ahead.
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