When Frank Kabatas first came to the United States in 1997 when he was 23, he’d only ever seen pizza in the movies.
A quarter of a century later, the Turkish immigrant, now 49, is the proud owner and operator of one of Manhattan’s most beloved pizza joints — the same one that fired him after a six-month stint as a delivery driver, shortly after his arrival in the Big Apple.
East Village Pizza, on the corner of 1st Avenue and 9th Street, was the first place to hire Kabatas upon landing in NYC.
Not only was it his first job, which he used to help pay for school, but it was also his first slice — ever.
“I never had pizza before,” Kabatas told The Post, recalling the then-owner handing him his first-ever regular slice, saying something like, “If you don’t make a good [cheese] slice… you’re not successful.”
And success didn’t come easy for the would-be mogul.
Being at the bottom of the totem pole meant eating his share of dirt — including taking the blame for a mistake in the kitchen, which wound up getting him fired.
“After I got fired, I still had to work. I needed to work to go to school, and I had a goal to achieve,” Kabatas said. Keeping things in perspective helped, he recounted.
“I was one of the luckiest guys — I ended up in the United States,” he said.
Fortunately, the owner of Ben’s Pizzeria on MacDougal Street was looking to hire, but with his limited English at the time, Kabatas didn’t understand he was being offered a job.
Undeterred, the owner took him by the arm, put him behind the counter and handed him an apron.
The Greenwich Village pizzeria was where the budding pie-san learned how to make pizza and sauce.
For the year and a half that he worked there, he spent 12 hours a day for six or seven days a week on the job, followed by five hours of night school.
But after two years of intense, on-the-job training, he realized that his knowledge was still too limited.
“I knew how to make really good pizza, but I didn’t know how to sell … I had to learn how to sell,” he said.
Kabatas ultimately snagged a job at Domino’s, where it’s all about moving a set list of product, he explained — that’s where he really began to learn the business side of things.
“It was probably the best decision I ever made, working with them,” he said, touting the Michigan-based chain as having some of the best marketing in the world.
Kabatas worked at Domino’s until 2003 — and then he heard that East Village Pizza was for sale. There wasn’t anything inherently unique or special about the place, he said, but the idea of coming full circle was appealing.
“I talked to my brother and I was like, we worked hard, we made some money, should we just go talk to the guy?” he remembered. “Maybe we could buy the store.”
Months later, he was the proud owner of the slice joint.
“It was just a regular pizzeria, but it was an opportunity for me to achieve my goal. I knew that when I work hard, I would get something back,” he said.
After he took over, Kabatas changed everything and made it his own — the recipes, the ovens, the way they made pizza — making it “the way [he] wanted it to be.”
“It’s not that he didn’t make good pizza, but I wanted to put the things that I learned into the passion that I actually can work every day in the kitchen,” he explained.
To this day, he’s still hands-on.
“I still make pizza. I still play around with my dough to figure out if I can make anything better,” he said.
And he has — the signature Margherita Pizza, Double Stacked Pizzas and Cheesy Garlic Knots are a hit with Kabatas’ 1.7 million followers on Instagram, where he learned how to grow an audience himself.
More importantly, he’s built up a loyal local customer base who will sometimes stop by just to see him, and will even call his cell to see if he’ll be there when they go.
And even though Kabatas bought the place he was once fired from, he made it clear that this was a goal to achieve for himself — not revenge.
“I don’t do revenge in my life because I know life is too short, and I had a goal to achieve. It just was an opportunity for me, and it was amazing,” he said.
“I work more than I ever did before, but it’s great to own your own pizzeria, to make your own decisions. I make mistakes, but I learn from my mistakes.”
