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Queens

Queens's culinary record

For culinary explorers, Queens is not merely a way station, it is a destination in itself. The largest in area of the five boroughs of New York City, Queens is the home of well over two million people, half of them born outside the United States, speaking untold hundreds of mother tongues. During the course of a day, you might hear a dozen languages without breaking a sweat. The gastronomic variety is perhaps even more astonishing. Queens embraces innumerable small neighborhoods within neighborhoods, and no single cuisine or family of cuisines holds sway in them all. The local favorites in food and drink, and the favorite ways to enjoy them, seem to change before your eyes every time you turn a corner.

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Upcoming Queens Food Tours

On this full-day Queens food tour, we’ll visit two of the borough’s most diverse neighborhoods, Corona and Jackson Heights, where we will sample more than a dozen specialities that reflect the incredible gastronomic range that the borough is known for. From the massive Puebla-rooted cemita sandwiches to Bengali street snacks, we’ll criss-cross the globe without leaving the neighborhood.

On this Queens food tour, we’ll hit the streets on a Saturday – when the griddles, grills and vendors are out in full force – to explore Corona’s culinary essentials.

On our Flushing food tour – a full-day stroll through New York’s largest "Chinatown" neighborhood – we’ll explore the area’s almost mind-blowing culinary diversity.

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Queens

Bhanchha Ghar: Momo Champ

Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) is the only four-time winner of New York City’s annual Momo Crawl. Early one afternoon, more than a thousand event goers fanned out from the block-long, pedestrian-only Diversity Plaza, at the western edge of Jackson Heights, and called on dozens of nearby restaurants, cafés, trucks and carts. Each dished out at least one style of momo, a filled dumpling best-known from Tibet and Nepal. Several hours later, after momo-crawlers had returned to the plaza and the popular vote had been tallied, Yamuna Shrestha, the owner of Bhanchha Ghar, once again proudly raised the Momo Belt high. The decorated yak-hide belt returned to its glass case, mounted on the back wall of the upstairs dining area, where it overlooks an open kitchen and a handful of tables.

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Queens

Bolivian Llama Party: Pump Up the Salteñas

When it comes to food from Central and South America, some dishes have become ubiquitous in the US – like the taco – while others haven’t seeped into the country’s consciousness in quite the same way. “We’d like for a salteña to be like a taco,” David Oropeza tells us at our table outside Bolivian Llama Party (BLP), the Sunnyside restaurant he co-owns with his two older brothers, Alex and Patrick. True to that mission, the trio has done more to popularize the salteña than anyone in the city. But a salteña is no taco. In fact, at a glance it resembles nothing more than a fat baked empanada – a resemblance that can vanish with one incautious bite.

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Queens

Indo-Caribbean Queens: A Curious Eater’s Guide to “Little Guyana”

Where the A train dead-ends at Lefferts Boulevard, Liberty Avenue stretches on into the heart of the enclave known as Little Guyana, part of the larger Richmond Hill neighborhood. To most Americans, and even New Yorkers, this population remains obscure. “People don’t know who we are,” says Lakshmee Singh, a talk show host and community leader in Queens, Richmond Hill, once a predominantly German and Italian neighborhood, has seen a steady stream of Guyanese immigrants since the 1970s. Today, it’s home to the largest Guyanese community outside of Guyana itself, with Guyanese immigrants representing the second largest foreign-born community in Queens.

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Queens

Native Dish: Esneider Arevalo’s Arepas

CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. While each episode features a general overview of the participant’s life story, particularly as it relates to food, we are expanding that narrative by providing the full interview transcript, albeit condensed and lightly edited. It’s their story, in their own words. To kick things off, we are spotlighting Esneider Arevalo, our Queens walks leader, and his family recipe for traditional golden arepas.

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Queens

Point Brazil: Bahía Comes to Astoria

“Have you been to Bahía, Donald?” José Carioca, a dapper, green-and-gold, happy-go-lucky parrot, poses this question to Donald Duck in the (mostly) animated 1944 film The Three Caballeros. For its beauty and charm — and, oh, the food! — José insists that Bahía (buy-EE-ah), a coastal state in northeastern Brazil, has no rival. It’s a full-throated endorsement, particularly from José: His surname, Carioca, identifies him as a native of Rio de Janeiro. Even for a parrot-about-town who has experienced the beauty of Rio’s beaches and the excitement of its nightlife, Bahía is a magical place. That spirit has been transported to Astoria, Queens, not by magic, but by the devotion of Bahían sisters Elzi and Erli Botelho Ribeiro.

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Latest Stories: Queens

Each year in late summer, some of the best athletes on the planet converge on Flushing Meadows Corona Park to compete in the United States Open Tennis Championships. In 2025, the U.S. Open begins with practice sessions and qualifier matches on Monday, August 18, and concludes with the men’s singles final, scheduled for Sunday, September 7. The tournament site does provide hungry fans with several cafés and casual bar-restaurants as well as a “food village.” But when in Queens – where some of the best food in the city is so close at hand – why would we confine ourselves to the boundaries of the tennis center? To energize ourselves beforehand or wind down afterward, here are a few of our favorite nearby dining destinations.

Moroccan cuisine, at least items like couscous and harissa, can today be found in nearly any supermarket. But New York, with all its culinary diversity, has never had a real Moroccan restaurant scene. The recently launched Moroccan Bites by Siham goes a long way toward filling that void. “[When I moved to New York] I would have loved to have a restaurant that I could be proud of and tell people about, but sadly, there was not,” says Rabat-born Redouan Lazrek, the restaurant’s co-owner and husband of Siham Bourhane, the chef.

Astoria’s Steinway Street has become a mecca for all types of Mediterranean food. Middle Eastern groceries and sweet shops, North African tagines and hookah bars, kebab carts and fast-food falafel dot the road. Throughout the neighborhood, also known as Little Egypt, there are several places to try feteer – a flaky, layered Egyptian pastry that can be eaten with everything from meat off a spit to powdered sugar – including longstanding favorites like Mum Feteer and Mombar. But within this crowded field, Levant, the new kid on the block, offers up innovative in-house baked goods and delicious meze starters that have made it a contender for best on the block.

As the 7 train clanks from the tracks above, the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights buzzes, serving as a commercial and cultural center for South Asian immigrants. Mobile stores and gold shops line 74th street amid kiosks that offer up passport photos and paan, an after-dinner betel leaf treat common in Southeast Asia. At the heart of it all, Merit Kabab and Dumpling Palace encapsulates the chaos in delicious culinary form. Employees from Bangladesh and Nepal walk by singing, as customers lean over the counter to snack on fist-sized samosas and sip on sweet chai. Feroz Ahmed, originally from Dhaka, sits in the corner fielding phone calls, armored in a fleece and snug cap. He has managed the restaurant for upwards of ten years. “They say the city of New York never sleeps. That it is open twenty-four hours. Ha!” he said. “But only here [in Jackson Heights] does it never sleep.”

Ride the 7 train as it rumbles above Roosevelt Avenue, and with every stop, you’ll find another world of where to eat in Queens, New York. Get off in Jackson Heights, and the air might be fragrant with Nepali spices and frying Indian jalebi; a few stations later in Corona, fresh-pressed tortillas and slow-cooked birria will welcome you. Here, the globe has unpacked its many kitchens alongside its luggage and moved in. This is Queens, a borough with more than 1 million foreign-born residents, thrumming with hundreds of languages, foods, and wares.

Suriname and Guyana are next-door neighbors on the northern shore of South America, yet within the Queens culinary scene, the visibility of these two countries couldn't be more different. When we arrive in South Richmond Hill, at the terminus of the elevated A train, signs welcome us to Little Guyana, and at many local markets, bakeries and restaurants, it's no challenge to find Guyanese food. Surinamese food is another matter. Outside of private kitchens, until recently the only reliable source of such specialties as pom and baka bana had been the yearly Sranan Dey festival in nearby Roy Wilkins Park.

Back when it was called Noisette, we'd passed by Paris Oven in the (not quite) year that it had been open. But whenever we’d walked down those sometimes clamorous blocks of 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens – not far from a bagel shop, a pizzeria, a comfort-food hotspot and a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant, whose windows open wide toward the street during happy hour – we’d given little notice to the quiet bakery-café with the French name. That changed during one recent stroll, not long before dark, when a hand-drawn signboard beside the door wished us “Ramadan Kareem” and beckoned us to come inside.

Amid the frenetic rush hour on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, we dodge old ladies wielding shopping bags, politely refuse offers for massages and phone repairs, navigating the dark and busy winter streets until we reach Old Captain’s Dumpling, a small beacon of calm and warmth. Inside the matchbox-sized restaurant, a sweeping photo of Taiwan covers the back wall, left by the previous tenants. Beneath it, two ladies in blue gingham smocks serenely knead dough and mix fillings, placing plump egg-sized dumplings to the side.

In the United States, there is often a tendency to flatten cuisines to single dishes. For many years, in many parts of the country, Chinese food meant lo mein, and Thai cooking equaled just pad Thai. But in Little Thailand, Queens, diners have more and more opportunities to embrace this country’s regional culinary diversity. Hug Esan, run by a triumvirate of Esan women from Thailand’s northeast region (also spelled Isan), are on a quest to introduce New Yorkers to specialties from their home.

Over the course of any year, I enjoy food from hundreds of establishments – white-linen restaurants and elbows-on-the-table eateries, as well as street food stands, fairs, festivals, grocers, and greenmarkets – throughout the five boroughs of New York City, and occasionally farther afield. Queens, which embraces innumerable small neighborhoods within neighborhoods, is one of my richest territories for tracking down good food. These "best bites" – most are snack-sized, though some might be considered full meals –could easily be an endless scroll. In this short list, I'll offer only a handful of suggestions for sharing in the deliciousness; with one ephemeral exception, all of them are available year-round. If you're still hungry for suggestions, my Queens colleagues at Culinary Backstreets can offer many more.

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