Home to countless immigrant stories, Queens is the most diverse borough in New York City, with over two million people, half of whom were born outside the United States. So it’s no surprise that the area’s markets – some sprawling, many more pocket-sized – are equally as diverse, serving immigrant communities both old and new. We recently sent out New York-based photographer Melanie Einzig to document fall’s bounty at five of the borough’s diverse marketplaces. Her visual harvest can be found below.

Just to the east of Flushing, the home of New York City's largest and fastest-changing Chinatown, is a sprawling neighborhood that boasts many of the city's most interesting Korean restaurants and food shops. We hesitate to call it a Koreatown. Compared with the few dense blocks of Manhattan's Koreatown, this part of Queens has a more open feel, with modest buildings, wider streets and more sunlight. Here, in the late 1700s, the Murray family owned a nursery of more than 100 acres filled with trees and other plants imported from around the world. In the late 1800s, when the nursery gave way to residential development, the burgeoning neighborhood was named for the family: Murray Hill.

Cafe Allende’s manager, Roberto Hernandez, stands behind the counter, serving customers pan chino out of a display case grown foggy from the warmth of the fresh pastries inside. “The idea was to come and study, finish school, and work as a technical engineer. But it didn’t work out that way. This pulled me in,” he says, gesturing around the cafe. “Now it's my life.” Roberto had come to Mexico City as a boy, moving in with a sister 20 years his senior and her husband, Jesús Chew, a Chinese immigrant and the owner of Cafe Allende. Welcomed into their family as another son, Roberto worked at the cafe and spent many evenings with Jesús, learning Mexican-Chinese recipes like the varieties of pan chino, which means “Chinese bread” in Spanish.

Almost every Chinese holiday comes paired with a festive dish. At Tomb-Sweeping Festival, there are bright green qingtuan (glutinous rice dumplings) to celebrate the arrival of spring. During Dragon Boat festival, we have zongzi, stuffed sticky rice steamed in bamboo leaves, to commemorate the poet Qu Yuan. And during Mid-Autumn Festival, we chow down on mooncakes as we gaze at the full moon. But Chinese New Year doesn’t come with just one dish. It is a feast that lasts for days, starting with “bao”-ing or wrapping dumplings on Chinese New Year’s Eve (for snacking on well into the night) to the tangyuan (more glutinous rice dumplings) eaten 15 days later on Yuanxiao or Lantern Festival.

Looking for the best Shanghai-style noodles, for the city’s most slurpable strands? From hairy crab specialists to the sesame sauce of your dreams, there’s something for everyone. Come prepared to chow down, but don’t forget there’ll be a wait at most of these joints. Reservations are not available for these mom-and-pop owned shops, and demand for these nostalgic flavors is high, especially during the breakfast and lunch rush.

Historically, Guizhou is one of China’s most overlooked provinces. The landlocked location in central China is sandwiched between the famous spice havens of Sichuan and Chongqing to the north and Hunan to the East, and tucked behind the tourist destination of Yunnan to the west. It has the largest population of people in poverty and lowest income per person in China, and the geography of the province has made it tough to travel around; mountainous roads and lack of infrastructure don’t make for easy tourism. Its biggest claim to fame has been Kweichow Moutai (Wade-Giles Romanization of Guizhou Maotai), the famous state-owned baijiu brand served to Richard Nixon when he met Mao Zedong.

New York City has many Chinatowns; how many is a matter for dispute. While the oldest and most famous is in Manhattan, southern Brooklyn now boasts two such neighborhoods – or maybe three, depending on who's counting. Without a doubt, however, the city's largest and fastest-changing Chinatown surrounds the eastern terminus of the 7 train in Flushing, Queens. One measure of Flushing's vibrancy is the variety of spoken languages. Flushing is home to speakers of Mandarin, Shanghainese, Fujianese, Cantonese, Taiwanese and many other Chinese languages and dialects. The neighborhoods immediately to the east are densely populated with Korean speakers; in much smaller numbers, we also find speakers of other East, South and Southeast Asian languages.

Normally the lead up to Lunar New Year (春节, chūnjié) results in the “great migration,” with people in China's big cities traveling back to their ancestral hometowns to enjoy the annual reunion dinner (团圆饭, tuányuánfàn, or 年夜饭, nián yè fàn) with their family. Nearly every shop and restaurant closes up for at least a week (and sometimes more like three), as employees travel back to inland provinces like Anhui and Henan for a well-earned break and the chance to eat traditional, home-cooked meals with relatives.

The loss of the world’s first baijiu-themed bar, Beijing’s Capital Spirits, to hutong landlord issues last year refocused the spirit’s lens on Shanghai, where bars are incorporating the grain alcohol into their drinks program. Baijiu may be the most-consumed spirit in the world – thanks mostly to China’s massive population – but its name has only recently started to make waves outside the country. This growing recognition is in part thanks to the trend of mixing baijiu into cocktails. At Healer Bar, this blending of Eastern flavors with Western drinking culture is a deliberate choice that is meant to educate as well as inebriate.