During a busy evening on Main Street in Flushing, the sight of a food cart grilling skewers of meat doesn’t seem out of the ordinary on a thoroughfare filled with street vendors. After hanging around long enough, though, it becomes clear that this cart is different from similar ones up the block. The most obvious difference is its operator, Ekrem, a young man from western China’s Xinjiang region who shows an intense care for each and every skewer of his Uyghur-style barbecue. As he effortlessly and gracefully flicks the perfect amount of his secret spice blend on each bit of meat (all of which are quality cuts), he tells us that nothing in them is artificial, gesturing up the street to indicate that the others in the area do not have the same exacting standards.