How to Eat Your Way Through Queens
Devour the world, from India to Thailand to Russia to Mexico, without ever leaving New York City.
Story by Anya Von Bremzen
Photographs by Jeremy Liebman
Typography by Ricardo Gonzales
WHEN I FIRST SETTLED IN QUEENS more than three decades ago — a Russian immigrant moving to the Big Apple to study piano at Juilliard — I went wild gastro-exploring New York’s biggest and most dizzyingly multicultural borough. There were Indian dosas in Jackson Heights, Colombian arepas next door, dim sum at the end of the 7 train line. Then I changed careers, began to lead a nomadic life as a travel writer, and bought a place in Istanbul. Queens became the place where I repacked my bags while plotting exotic new Elsewheres.
Recently, though, during a long lull between trips, I decided to channel my ever-present wanderlust toward my own polyglot Queens, embarking on a global- food subway safari. Right outside my door in Jackson Heights, it took me all of two minutes to get hooked on Tibetan momos at a place next to the Myanmar mini-mart hawking fermented green- tea-leaf salad. At Bonjuk, a Flushing outpost of a famous Korean rice porridge chain, I had a pumpkin juk that was even more nourishing than the one I’d had back in Seoul, while the lamb pilafs in Rego Park’s Bukharan restaurants brought back languid lunches under mulberry trees at friends’ houses in Samarkand.
Perhaps more than anything else, I emerged with an ever-deepening appreciation of food as a cultural force behind the vitality of our immigrant neighborhoods. So top up your MetroCard, retie your shoelaces, and follow me into the insanely delicious world of Queens.
BUKHARAN BROADWAY
“EAT IT! NOW!” a bossy, bighearted Bukharan babushka commands at Iosif Kosher Bakery, handing me a flaky, sweet Uzbek samsa, a samosa-like pastry bulging with walnuts. “Oy, gevalt!” bellows a customer from Odessa. “Where’s poppy-seed roll, you already ran out?”
It’s Friday noon, and I’m doing my ecumenical Shabbos shopping on the low-rise stretch of Rego Park’s 108th Street, grandly known as Bukharan Broadway. The area was initially settled by immigrant Jews from all over the USSR — then, after the empire’s bust, became a hub of a Central Asian (Bukharan) Jewish diaspora from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. At the Gastronom supermarket, USSR nostalgia stirs as I fill my cart with kolbasa sausage (the pan-Soviet fatty madeleine), frozen black currants from Latvia, and chocolates in bright retro-socialist wrappers.
Scattered across Rego Park, local Bukharan restaurants all have similar Silk Road menus: tandir-baked breads, samsa, lamb soup thick with hand-pulled Uyghur noodles, kebabs (some swear by the tender chicken ones at Salute), and lamb plov, a cuminy rice pilaf threaded with carrots that was a great specialty of my Uzbek-born paternal grandmother.
One night I introduce my mom, an Odessa-born Moscow Jew and Queens resident for more than three decades, to the Taste of Samarkand, named for the Silk Road city in Uzbekistan, once a grand capital of Tamerlane’s 14th-century empire. Inside, a table of Russian-speaking belles are toasting a birthday with Armenian Ararat brandy chased with Coke. A post-Soviet melting pot of sweet waitresses — Turkmen, Uzbek, Azeri — in colorful Central Asian tunics mosaic our table with pickled baby eggplants, floppy manti dumplings filled with hand-chopped lamb, and noni toki, a dramatically concave matzo-like bread. Mom swoons, first over the nakhot garmack, nutty chickpeas braised forever with veal tails, then the delicate plov, which she pronounces “the best outside Samarkand!” “But Mom, you’ve never been to Uzbekistan,” I point out. “Now I have!” she retorts, and we toast Queens from our half-pint of BYO vodka.
LITTLE EGYPT’S MAIN DRAG
Since the 1990s, the kebab and hookah-smoky portion of Astoria’s otherwise blah Steinway Street has been dubbed Little Egypt. These days it could also be Little Morocco or Little Palestine, and its contours have swelled beyond its historic zone between 25th and 28th Avenues.
STEINWAY STREET
TUT’S HUB: A mini-Vegas mirage of Egyptian kitsch, with incised murals of ancient pharaohs (plus a wowza waterfall), serves kushari — an earthy pileup of macaroni, lentils, and rice so authentic it could be from Cairo.
HALAL SANDWICH SHOP: Stews and grills are also on offer at this shop, which pulsates with the beat of Rai music. Don’t miss the “Hungry Man” sandwich of kofta and spicy merguez lamb sausages.
TANJAWI MARKET: This butcher-slash-bakery supplies the meat for the Halal Sandwich Shop and also sells deep red, spicy harissa, round khobz rolls, and gorgeous Moroccan ceramic platters — all for a song.
NILE GOURMET DELI: Stock up here on smoked mackerel (yup, from the Nile), slender Egyptian olives, pepper-studded rumi cheese, and hookah tobacco.
KABAB CAFE: Ali El-Sayed, chef-cum-philosopher in a beret, opened his pioneering nook in 1989, drawing ur-foodies to this part of Queens with his personal riffs on delicate fava falafel and slow-cooked, subtly spiced Alexandrian stews.
AL-SHAM SWEETS & PASTRIES: This pastry shop indulges customers speaking every dialect of Arabic with syrup-drenched shredded wheat kanafeh and crumbly sesame cookies.
SABRY’S: Egyptian swells pluck their preferred silvery branzini and porgies from ice here, to be impeccably grilled or fried by the kitchen.
DUZAN: An array of tangy, colorful side salads complement the succulent chicken shawarma at this beloved Palestinian-owned eatery.
THAITOWN
The square mile of Queens directly south of Jackson Heights is peak multiculti, a microcosm of the borough where more languages might be spoken than anywhere else in the world. Gastronauts hail it as the next great Little Asia — thick with Taiwanese and Hong-style noodle shops, Vietnamese banh mi parlors, and excellent Malaysian and Indonesian spots. With some several thousand Thai immigrants, it’s also the epicenter of vibrant kaffir-lime-scented curries undiluted for farangs (foreigners). Dipping steamed white bread into green pandan-scented custard one happy afternoon, I could be in a trendy shopping mall in Bangkok.
Ah, where to start? Is it the crispy fish larb served with a gardenful of aromatic herbs at Hug Esan, a fiery northeastern Thai newcomer? Or the sizzling duck in velvety yellow Panang curry at Ayada Thai, a neighborhood stalwart? Is it the café scene with cool kids Instagramming Day-Glo-colored shaved ice at the Tea Cup Café? “I ran a restaurant in Manhattan,” says Boyd, its hipster owner. “Now I don’t have to make tourist pad thai, and I’m with my friends.”
The most charming part? The community spirit. Saffron-robed monks wander around collecting alms every morning. Ayada’s owner, Kitty, is best chums with Jackie, the gracious presence behind the dessert case at Khao Nom café, with its jewel-like mung bean marzipan tromp l’oeils. Jackie’s brother-in-law, Tor, is the creative genius here and at Khao Khang, a steam-table spot nearby where a mere ten bucks gets me a scoop of rice and three curries that explode in my mouth in complexities of sweet, bitter, sour, and sweet. And supplying the tight-knit community with galangal and palm sugar is Thai Thai grocery store, crammed with exotica. Such as? “Next-generation protein!” crows the owner, holding up frozen packets of crickets and water bugs. “Soo crunchy when fried!”
CHINATOWN
I surface from the last stop of the 7 train into a world of Chinese signage. This is New York’s real Chinatown, where I manage to get good and lost in various food courts, senses swamped, camera fogged by thick gusts of dumpling steam. I’m no stranger to Flushing and its glut of regional specialties: For $1.25 apiece inside Corner 28, I’ve enjoyed feathery Peking duck buns. At Shanghai You Garden, a handsome xiao long bao mecca, I’ve slurped up the rich gelatinous broth — through a pink straw, no less — from oversize Shanghainese soup dumplings. But a serious food safari requires an expert. Luckily, Joe DiStefano — Mandarin speaker, alpha chowhound, social media pal, and Airbnb experience host (see “Guided Food Tours to Check Out,” page 110) — comes to my rescue.
We unsheathe our chopsticks for shrimp-filled Cantonese rice batter rolls at Joe’s Steam Rice Roll, inside a nondescript shopping arcade. “They use stone-ground rice, which makes their chang fen especially delicate,” my expert elucidates before whisking me down to the basement food court at the brash, glitzy New World Mall. We start at a Uyghur stand where smiling guys in skullcaps dish out mutton pilafs. Inside Stall 30, a squad of unsmiling dames speed-pleat plump pork and chive dumplings. (“The ladies are Korean-Chinese from Shandong,” notes Joe, who prowls these malls almost daily.) Our grail? Henanese sweet potato “cold skins noodles” from Stall 4: addictive slithery things threaded with gluten nuggets in a lake of mouth-tingling chili-garlic-vinegar sauce.
A short walk away at the cozier New York Food Court, at Peng Shun Spicy Pot, Joe orders the Muslim Lamb Chop, a specialty of the Dongbei region (a.k.a. Manchuria). Chop? Ha! A rack appears — marinated, steamed to heartbreaking tenderness, encrusted in a cuminy spice mix, then battered and deep-fried.
Mind: blown.
LITTLE INDIA’S FOOD GLOSSARY
Dense with Jewelry shops, Bollywood-worthy sari emporiums, and restaurants scented with masalas from all over South Asia, the area dubbed Little India around the Roosevelt Avenue subway station is also home to Pakistanis, Tibetans, and Nepalis, plus a large Bangladeshi community. Here’s what to taste (and where).
MOMOS: Pleated dumplings found in Tibet and Nepal, with various fillings including beef (Phayul) and chicken (Nepali Bhanchha Ghar).
CHAAT: A saladlike Indian street snack often made with crispy fried dough tossed with potatoes, chickpeas, herbs, yogurt, spices, and tamarind sauce (Bombay Chat).
DHOKLA: Fluffy cakes made from fermented rice and chickpea flour, served as breakfast or a light snack in the Gujurat (Rajbhog Sweets and Snacks).
MITHAI: The umbrella term for Indian sweets, which range from the fudgelike carrot-based gajar burfi to lush milky paneer-flavored Malai cham cham (Maharaja Sweets and Snacks).
THENTHUK: Hand-pulled Tibetan noodles served in a hearty broth packed with vegetables, meat, or both (Lhasa Fast Food).
MISHTI DOI: A Bangladeshi yogurt fermented with caramel-like jaggery palm sugar that tastes like a cross between yogurt and dulce de leche (Dhaka Garden).
SNACKS OF LATIN AMERICA
Quechua-Speaking oldsters in Andean ponchos munch on chochos (lupini beans), Colombian teens clutch cups of Technicolor raspados (crushed ice), and ladies hawking churros and tacos crowd the sidewalks on Roosevelt Avenue, from Jackson Heights to Corona. Under the elevated 7 train, step along to the changing beats — cumbia, salsa, bachata, ranchero — as you navigate each country by nibble.
COLOMBIA: Maria Piedad Cano, a tiny, seraphic former judge from Medellín, became canonized as the Arepa Lady for the heavenly griddled Colombian corn cakes she sold on then dangerous street corners decades ago. Her sons have formalized the business at Areperia Arepa Lady café, a sweet almost-Brooklynish spot with Mexican craft beers on the chalkboard.
URUGUAY: One of the neighborhood’s oldest Hispanic presences was Uruguayan and Argentine. Demographics have changed, but La Nueva Bakery still indulges calorie-unconscious Uruguayans with crumbly alfajores (cookies sandwiching dulce de leche) and plump empanadas with pretty, professional pleats.
EL SALVADOR: At Mi Pequeño El Salvador, it’s all about pupusas: hand-padded griddled cakes of masa harina filled with gooey cheese and loroco (a vine flower).
ECUADOR: Food trucks cluster under the 7 train at Warren Street, hawking the food of Queen’s second-largest Hispanic group. Its cuisine requires being hip to a coastal-highland divide. Grab a bracing encebollado de pescado (a tuna soup zapped with pickled red onions) at El Guayaquileno and a crisp-skinned hornado (roast pork) with mote, Andean grape-size corn kernels, from Pique Y Pase. To wash it down: morocho, a sweetly spiced hominy drink nourishing enough to qualify as an alternative energy source.
MEXICO: At Tortas Neza, Galdino Molinero — the larger-than-life fútbol fanatic from Mexico City — constructs larger-than-life tortas named after Mexican soccer clubs. Fried egg, breaded chicken, ham, bacon, stringy white cheese, and jalapeños pile into an airy, oversize bun for the jaw-defying, skyscraping tortas Pumas (Molinero’s team).
Airbnb Experiences for Foodies in Queens:
LATIN AMERICAN: Peruse 20 blocks and three different neighborhoods with Queens native Elizabeth as she leads you on a walk through Latino culture, snack by snack.
GREEK: Learn about the history of the Greek community in Astoria with culinary tour guide Angelis while sampling food from groceries, butcher shops, cafés, and bakeries.
ASIAN: Join Joe — blogger, culinary expert, and Anya von Bremzen’s friend — as he helps you navigate the vibrant community of Flushing, from temples to food courts.
About the author: Moscow-born food writer Anya von Bremzen is the winner of three James Beard Awards for her books and journalism. She is the author of six acclaimed cookbooks including PALADARES, her latest book about Cuba, as well as a memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, which has been translated into fifteen languages. Anya has written for Food & Wine, Travel+Leisure, Saveur, the New Yorker, and Foreign Policy magazines among other publications. She divides her time between Queens, NY, and Istanbul.
