Behind the counter at Le Bon Pain in Queens Village, more often than not, is Ghislaine Clervoix, a woman in her 80s who has owned the place for more than 30 years. Ghislaine chats in English and Haitian Creole with her regular customers, a few of whom she’s known for decades and introduces as her “old-school friends.” Diminutive loaves of French bread are the namesake of the bakery, and plenty of customers come in to buy them fresh; the Clervoix family also bakes large quantities for supermarkets around Long Island and Queens. On a recent visit, though, the signature bread seemed like an afterthought to most customers, who were clamoring for the bakery’s patties.

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. This month we are spotlighting Jeannie Ongkeo and her recipe for Tam Mak Hoong, a Lao green papaya salad drenched with savory anchovy sauce.

While on a culinary walk in Queens, we stop by a tortillería that uses high-quality corn and the traditional nixtamalization process to make their delicious tortillas. But tasting homemade tortillas is just the beginning on a global journey through the United Kitchens, where immigrants from all over the world, including Tibet, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina, share their flagship flavors.

The family chemistry is strong at Little Egypt in Ridgewood, Queens. Nashaat Youssef (“Nash” to friends and customers, who often are one and the same) owns the four-year-old business with his sister, Nagwa Hanna (“Hanna”). Nash’s wife, Yvette, and their teenaged sons, Wadie and Mark, also help out around the restaurant – Wadie a little less these days, now that he’s attending a local college. Hanna, who has a day job, wins praise for her pastries. But the lion’s share of the menu falls to Nash. “The day I don’t cook, I feel something,” he tells us. Ever since his childhood in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, he adds, cooking has been “in my blood.” When Nash was his sons’ age, he began working at a seafood restaurant, close by the water, called Samakmak.

Homestead Gourmet Shop in Kew Gardens, with its quaint, peeling sign and cheery strudel-filled front window, looks like a Disney vision of the Old World. Its employees, clad in all white with old-fashioned paper hats, evoke a 1950s soda fountain shop. It feels like a relic in a forgotten corner of the city. In fact, German fare like the kind served here has become something of a relic in the contemporary American food scene, as changing tastes have led to the shuttering of dozens of old-school German dining institutions around the country. At Homestead, though, this kind of food is alive and well – thanks, in a very Queens-like twist, to a Polish immigrant who went from working at the counter to owning the place.

On our “Corona’s Culinary Specials” walk in Queens, we make our way along Roosevelt Avenue, ducking into markets and stopping by vendors representing Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina (among others). On such spot is an Ecuadorian bakery, where the glass cases are filled with a myriad of sweet treats and pastries.

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. This month we are spotlighting Manashe Khaimov and his family’s recipe for bakhsh, or green rice.

“Thai people in the North eat a lot of herbs,” Arada Moonroj tells us, over tea, in the dining room of Lamoon. Arada (Ah-rah-dah) opened the restaurant in 2018 with her husband, Jugkrwut Borin, and their longtime friend Piboon “Otto” Thongtanyong in Elmhurst, Queens – a neighborhood already flush with Thai restaurants and cafes. Many of these businesses feature the cuisine of Bangkok, which is heavily influenced by Chinese immigration and often tends toward sweetness. A smaller number serve the rustic and spicy food of Isan, the northeastern region that borders Laos and Cambodia. But very few, anywhere in New York, devote themselves to the food of Northern Thailand, Arada’s first home.

Come Saturday, the griddles and grills in Corona, an already lively neighborhood in Queens, are working overtime and the street vendors come out in full force – even in the depths of winter. We explore the neighborhood, which is nothing less than the culinary epicenter of New York’s Latin American community, on our half-day “Corona’s Culinary Essentials” walk.

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.

The largest of New York’s five boroughs, Queens is the home of over two million people, half of them born outside the United States, speaking more than 150 different languages. It’s also home to countless immigrant stories of the most classic kind: a newcomer arrives and sets up shop – or, more frequently, cart – selling the food of his or her homeland as the first step towards making it in America. As a result, for the culinary explorer, Queens is truly the promised land. With so much available in this land of plenty, it can be difficult to choose favorites. But our Queens correspondents were up to the task. Here they are reminiscing about their best bites of 2018.

If we could wind the clock back to 1934, to listen in as Rudy’s Bakery rolled its first strudel, German is the language we would have heard at the baker’s bench, and beside the glass-fronted display cases, and, more likely than not, on the sidewalk outside, along Seneca Ave. At least since the late 1800s, Ridgewood, Queens, was a predominantly German community. Local breweries were major employers; at the turn of the century, Ridgewood and neighboring Bushwick, Brooklyn, were home to more than a dozen.

Enslaved Africans first stepped onto North American soil in 1619, unloaded by the Dutch West Indian Company in Jamestown, Virginia. Colonists first auctioned enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam (now New York City), New York, in 1626. According to the New York Historical Society, during the colonial period, 41 percent of the city's households had enslaved peoples, compared to 6 percent in Philadelphia and 2 percent in Boston. Only Charleston, South Carolina, rivaled New York in the degree to which slavery entered everyday life. By 1756, enslaved Africans made up about 25 percent of the populations of Kings, Queens, Richmond, New York and Westchester counties, says historian Douglas Harper. Because of a longer and colder winter, the lives of Queens County and Long Island slaves differed from those of their southern counterparts.

Getting ready for a recent New Year’s in Harlem, the Hungarian side of the family was craving a traditional pot of lentils that needed a hunk of smoked pork knuckle. Where to find one with the right flavor in New York City? After some calls and searching, we headed out to Muncan Food Corporation. The address brought us to a storefront along a strip of low-rise brick buildings in Astoria, Queens. Inside the front door we were blasted with smokehouse aromas. To the left: racks of sausages, pâtés, cold cuts – all kinds of dried and cured delicacies dangling from hooks overhead.

This autumn Nepali Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) became the first two-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 Nepali 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.