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.

Jibro fry, slices of tender and subtly seasoned goat tongue, was the dish that took our first meal at Newa Chhe to the top. Will we have the opportunity to taste it again? We began fortifying ourselves with the hearty food at this Nepalese restaurant (pronounced Knee-wah Chay) not long after it opened, in December 2023, in Sunnyside. The restaurant is a partnership between Radip (rah-Deep) Shrestha and three of his longtime friends: Bijay Khayargoli, Kunchok Sherpa and Pashupati Shrestha (no relation to Radip).

New York City’s most international borough certainly delivers when it comes to baked goods. Queens is home to some of the city’s best bakeries with influences and recipes from around the world, making it a prime destination for anyone with a serious sweet tooth. From baklava to Black Forest Cake, Filipino tortas to freshly baked bread, you’ll be spoiled for choice. Here, our local experts have handpicked the best pastries, breads, and goodies in Queens to bookmark for your next trip.

It’s a weekend afternoon in the packed Tashkent Supermarket in Forest Hills, Queens and amid the din three teenage cashiers speak wistfully about hometowns in Uzbekistan. They also tell us of the need to speak Uzbek, Tajik, Russian, and English to help customers navigate the cavern of delights on offer. In case the polyglot teens working here don’t make clear the diversity on offer, television screens hanging above the aisles do, flashing photos of specials including samsa, Central Asian savory pastries, and branzino filets – a favorite of several Mediterranean cuisines. An express lane exists “only for shawarma and plov.”

For many visitors to New York, the first sight of Queens comes from above, during the approach to JFK or LaGuardia, the city's two international airports. And the first thought, upon landing, is to keep going. How far is it, they wonder, to our hotel, and to the museums, theaters, shopping, and sights? How long till we get to "the city"? 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, we might hear a dozen languages without breaking a sweat.

It's a common bond shared by children all across the United States: lining up for lunch at the school cafeteria. Our own fond memories of these meals are few and far between, particularly when we think of the institutional food on the menu. We had better luck with lunches packed from home – in part because we could show off our TV-themed lunchboxes – but for many school children, then and now, this isn't always an option. Enter the lunch lady: a nostalgic, nurturing figure who presides over the cafeteria, and who ensures that the children get what they need.

My first job in Queens was in a garage in Auburndale. Not an auto body garage. It was residential – a guy named Arthur rented it out to store the goods he won at storage unit auctions. My job was to list those goods on Amazon and eBay, for which he paid me $100 a week, and an unlimited MetroCard. It was 2012. I’d take the q66 from East Elmhurst to Flushing on my way to work, and eat my way through the Golden Shopping Mall, where Xi’an Famous Foods had their first stall.

In 1683, so the story goes, an Austrian Jewish baker wished to honor King Jan Sobieski of Poland for repelling an invading army. The king was renowned as a horseman, and so the baker shaped a ring of dough into the shape of a stirrup – a beugel. That origin story might be impossible to verify, but the bagel is inextricably entwined with the culinary history of Eastern European Jews – and, thanks to immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the culinary history of New York City Today, of course, bagels are consumed not only within New York's Jewish communities but throughout the city – and the United States – as standard American breakfast fare. Commercially packaged and, typically, frozen, bagels are displayed and sold in the same chain stores that sell brand-name sliced bread. But while they might adhere to the basics – yeasted dough shaped into a ring, briefly boiled, then baked – these mass-market bagels are factory-made.

On a warm, sunny weekend afternoon in the spring of 2022, we visited a street fair on Myrtle Ave., a major thoroughfare that cuts through Ridgewood, Queens. The roadway was closed to traffic, in favor of street food vendors, for many blocks; the only bus in sight was a 1950s coach, which we boarded to peruse the vintage advertisements and the lounge-like seating at the rear. But despite our appetite, none of the street food vendors tempted us. We continued walking eastward, beyond the street fair and into the adjoining neighborhood of Glendale, until we were drawn toward the sight of a familiar, eternally hungry, cartoon character holding a hamburger.

"I've lived in Fresh Meadows all my life, and I never knew this was here." Kevin Sims has heard similar sentiments many times. He's the manager of the Down to Earth Farmers Market in Cunningham Park, which hosts some 20 vendors on Sunday morning and early afternoon, from April through December, at one edge of the park. Considering that Cunningham comprises 358 acres of athletic fields, hiking and biking trails and picnic grounds, and is just one part of a 2,800-acre corridor of greenspace in the wide-open spaces of eastern Queens, a once-a-week farmers market might easily be overlooked.

Woodside recently came to mind when we spoke with Franco Raicovich, the chef and a co-owner of Fuzi Pasta, a restaurant in Fresh Meadows. Franco grew up in Woodside, and on Sundays he would visit his father’s parents, Nonno Bepe and Nonna Angela, and help to fold the fuzi, an Istrian pasta that's now the namesake of his restaurant. Those childhood Sundays were a half-century ago. Today, the elevated 7 train that takes us eastward from Manhattan to Jackson Heights, Corona and Flushing passes over a very different Woodside, and yet more than ever, it's a neighborhood that shouldn't be overlooked. True, Woodside is crisscrossed by Queens Boulevard and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), which corral many lanes of auto traffic at all hours, as well as the LIRR commuter rail.