Northeast Pizza shop bakes KC’s most accessible food into a new restaurant for all, owner says

Rising from a family of restaurateurs, Noah Quillec is striking out on his own — with the help of some culinary friends — to bring a new pizzeria to Kansas City’s Northeast; it’s a move he hopes will bring unity by the slice.

“This neighborhood is very accessible, so diverse and so all over the place,” said Quillec, who lives near Pendleton Heights. “Pizza is a food that is accessible to everyone and everybody likes. It is sort of a unifying food.”

Northeast Pizza — scheduled to open later this month at 2203 Lexington Ave., across the street from PH Coffee — is expected to offer New York-style pizzas: 16-inch build-your-own or a choice from six specialty pizzas.

It also will have a pizza-by-the-slice counter with three or four selections, along with salads and garlic knots, beer and wine, and chocolate chip cookies from the French Market, Quillec said.

The pizza shop owner grew up inside his family’s popular restaurants — from the former Hannah Bistro Cafe to Cafe Provence and the French Market in Prairie Village. And he always plans to be part of the family business, he said.

But after moving to Northeast Kansas City seven years ago, Quillec started looking for a spot where he could do something separate from the family.

Northeast Pizza space at 2203 Lexington Ave., Kansas City; photo by Joyce Smith

Northeast Pizza offers that opportunity, he said, while still tapping into the expertise of others. Quillec, who will be in charge of operations, partnered with two friends on the project, Michael DeStefano and Max Popoff.

Popoff is founder, owner and operator of Farewell, a music venue across from GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. It opened in 2018. He also is a contractor and is doing the build-out for Northeast Pizza.

“Noah is one of my oldest and best friends and I love him to death and I believe we can make a really great pizza for the neighborhood,” Popoff said.

DeStefano is executive chef at Verbena, another Quillec family concept that is attached to the Inn at Meadowbrook in Prairie Village.

While Verbena is more fine dining, Northeast Pizza will be a different outlet for him — a little neighborhood spot focused on just one thing: pizza.

DeStefano grew up in the Northland, and earned a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island in 2008, and a bachelor’s in hospitality management at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 2010. 

Between the two degrees, he worked as a chef in Washington, D.C. He later spent a decade at restaurants in Chicago.

When he moved back to Kansas City four years ago, DeStefano did pizza pop-ups at breweries and wineries before joining Verbena.

“It was just kind of a goal to open a pizza restaurant, something small,” he said. “Working at Verbena, I got to know Noah and we bonded over it. There was just room in the city for good pizza.”

When not needed at Verbena, DeStefano plans to pop in to Northeast Pizza to make dough and hang out.

“I’m passionate about it. Hopefully people from the neighborhood will like it and others will read about and come down,” he said. 

After high school, Quillec worked at restaurants and food retailers in New York and in northern California. When he returned to the metro, he had opportunities with his family and others, but not in his beloved Northeast.

He hopes locally owned operations will continue to open in the area.

“I love living there, my favorite part of the city and I don’t plan on leaving,” he said. 

Once it opens, Northeast Pizza’s initial hours of operation will be 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. It will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

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Startland News contributor Joyce Smith covered local restaurants and retail for nearly 40 years with The Kansas City Star. Click here to follow her on Bluesky, here for X (formerly Twitter), here for Facebook, here for Instagram, and by following #joyceinkc on Threads.