For people who love to eat, who love Queens — we give you our best gift ideas, most of which are edible, from across the borough. Between now and the end of the year, we’re giving away some of these gifts to lucky readers. Follow us on Instagram and sign up for our newsletter to be the first to see what’s up for grabs.
 

When I learned about MitchMallows, a gourmet marshmallow company in Long Island City, I had two questions. The first was a cynical one: How gourmet can these marshmallows be? (Blame bodega culture for conditioning me to be suspicious of anything that bills itself as “gourmet.”) The second was a pragmatic one: How do you sustain an artisanal marshmallow business? 

The answers were: “extremely gourmet” and “incredibly carefully.” 

Growing up in Rockaway, just a few blocks from the ocean and a short train ride or drive from Manhattan, leaves a person with the exhilarating feeling of existing between two worlds. That precise feeling is what inspired Rockaway native Pat Butera to name his charter fishing business Forever Two Worlds. He took to the water like a “waterette,” learning to swim at just 18 months old, and swam competitively through his teenage years. 

“Everyone loves the free beer guy!” said John, a middle-aged man wearing glasses and an earnest grin.

And he was right. Despite the more than 75 cheeses to sample from nearly 20 different creameries at the New York Epicurean Events’ 2016 Great Northeast Cheese and Dairy Festival, everyone was undoubtedly head over heels in love with John, the man handing out plastic cups of keg beer with compliments and jokes while patrons waited in line to sample some of New England’s best dairy.

Most of us think of tea and China like wine and France: The country’s teahouse culture dates back hundreds, even thousands of years and is still very much woven into the fabric of social life across China. New Yorkers’ passion for the depth and diversity of regional Chinese cuisine suggests we’d have plenty of options for teahouses and dim sum parlors serving first-rate tea from Shanghai to Yunnan. So where’s all the Chinese tea in New York?

Here is our brief guide to a variety of dining establishments in Long Island City offering menu items that travel well, plus most have seating too!

Takumen

Surbhi Sahni is a Michelin-starred pastry chef who has lived roughly half her life in India and half in the United States, so it’s fitting that she specializes in innovative sweets that fuse both countries’ flavors. Her exploration of unexpected ingredients and texture hybrids is unsurprising for such a groundbreaker. 

I got my first job at a restaurant in Washington Heights, peeling potatoes in the basement. I literally peeled hundreds of pounds per day,” Chef Bo O’Connor recalled, sitting at the sun-drenched bar of her Astoria restaurant, The Pomeroy.

After a 19-hour haul from New York, and a comparatively quick 50-minute van trip from Noi Bai International Airport to the Hoàn Kiêm District, my two teenagers and I are hungry for a taste of Vietnam. Chaos reigns on Hanoi’s knotty streets. Careening Vespas stand between us and a bowl of noodles. Our guide Linh braces us with a “Ready?” and decisively helps us across the dizzying street.

Abby Carney is the editor of Edible Queens and writes about everything from reproductive rights and relationships to breakfast tacos and toxic, edible weeds for Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, SAVEUR and other magazines and websites. A Southern-raised magpie with a penchant for long treks and grand entrances, her pumpkin pie has won awards in the state of Kentucky.

When it comes to TV cooking competitions, it can often seem like the price of admission is ego rather than talent. Chefs compete to take up the most space on screen, not to create the most delicious dish. Yet a few weeks ago, on the TV show “Chopped,” a humble, quiet chef won over the judges with his graciousness as well as his elegant, creative takes on Greek cuisine. 

Amy Quichiz’s smile brightens the doorway of her family’s Jackson Heights home. She speaks with candor and is quick to laugh, or cry—telltale traits of a Pisces, she disclaims. 

Growing up, whenever I’d tell somebody I was from Queens, whether a native New Yorker or not, they would always guess Flushing. I am Chinese American and that was where all the Asians lived, after all. I would always feel a tinge of embarrassment that they’d had me pegged right, and I’d wonder what assumptions they already had about me. 

Most children from immigrant families feel some sort of identity crisis, but mine was inextricably tied to a neighborhood. 

Did you know that New York City has the highest number of women entrepreneurs in our neighborhoods? According to New York City Small Business Services, women across the five boroughs employ over 190,000 people and generate approximately $50 billion in sales. This month, we’re proud to present our annual Women’s issue—dedicated to all the innovative women chefs, food entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, bakers, mixologists and more who help feed the borough everyday.

If you want access to the coolest man in food media, don’t buy Laurie Woolever a drink.  

These days, Anthony Bourdain’s “gatekeeper” (a more appropriate term than “assistant”) is stone-cold sober. Well, except for the special-occasion toke every once in awhile.  

Did you know that New York City has the highest number of women entrepreneurs in our neighborhoods? According to New York City Small Business Services, women across the five boroughs employ over 190,000 people and generate approximately $50 billion in sales. This month, we’re proud to present our annual Women’s issue—dedicated to all the innovative women chefs, food entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, bakers, mixologists and more who help feed the borough everyday.

They beckon, silently, to passersby. They linger near restaurant doorways, press up against the glass of bakery windows, lean against the produce in greengrocers’ outdoor bins and hang beside the service windows of street vendors’ carts. They reach out with a personal touch, as if to say, “We belong here, we’re part of the community; ours is a family business, not part of a chain.”

There’s a new salad in town, a Burmese fermented tea leaf salad called laphet, latphat or laphat (LAH-fat) thoke. Thokes are dense, ingredient-packed, room-temperature salads—and there’s a wide variety available at Asian Bowl, whose new owners have injected some traditional Burmese flavor into Forest Hills since February 2019. It’s one of two brick-and-mortar Burmese restaurants in New York City.

The wind whips against the windows as New York’s first big winter storm unleashes its fury on the quiet city outside. Yet it’s business as usual inside The Queen’s Room, packed with red-nosed, frosty-eared New Yorkers engaged in the uncomfortable ritual of sharing café tables. Two people still in layers sip Champagne by the window, despite that fact that it’s just after 11am on a Thursday.

Just a block or so from Flushing’s Main St. station, a small sidewalk queue almost seems to bounce with anticipation—waiting for lemon grapefruit, red bean and green tea, mango, and several other milk bubble tea flavors. Located in ChaTime’s former home (the publicly listed Taiwanese chain with over 1,000 stores worldwide), beside a passport photo booth and cell phone repair shop, the tiny mall space mostly operates from its walk-up window, though it’s possible to order from inside.

Thousands of years ago, nomadic Turks had to develop ways to preserve their food as they traveled. As a result, they made milk into yogurt—the word “yogurt” is based on the Old Turkish root word “yog,” which means to intensify or condense—to which they eventually added water to dilute the bitterness. And that’s how the yogurt drink called ayran was born. 

Where to Find Ayran in Queens