Seems like old times: Dining out in Queens, whether we're grabbing a quick bite or sitting down for a meal, is nearly as exciting a prospect in late 2023 as it was in the first few months of 2020, before the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, serendipitous encounters with friends are still less likely, and scheduled lunches and dinners are sometimes painstaking to arrange. But when we do get out and about, there are many new restaurants, cafés, bakeries, markets and street vendors to discover, many new dishes to try, many old favorites to revisit. We keep a list (it gets longer all the time), and we imagine you do, too. Here are a few of our recent favorites for you to keep in mind.

On the streets of Chongqing, no menus are needed. From that southwestern Chinese city near Sichuan province, a beribboned snapshot – which hangs beside the table where we speak with Tingting Li, the chef and a partner of 200 Gram Noodles, in Flushing, Queens – helps tell the story. The snapshot depicts an outdoor noodle stall, where customers at short plastic tables are perched upon even shorter and surely precarious plastic stools. Knees bend toward chins. In this setting, customers simply call to the noodle-maker from their seats; a standard order is “200 grams.”

During the World Cup, Steinway Street in Astoria is filling with the sounds, flavors and hopes of Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. We spend an evening moving between three restaurants where the tournament is already being felt in seafood platters, merguez sandwiches and tagines.