Talk to any Bay Area septuagenarian or vegan college kid today and you’ll likely find that they’re tending to a Mason jar of bubbling sourdough starter or pickled farmers market vegetables. While people all around the world have been relying on food fermentation since ancient times—and natural fermentation predates human history—the practice has become particularly trendy in the past decade. 

If you’re into taking photos of your food before you eat, chances are you follow @foodbabyny on Instagram.

Along the capsaicin-soaked arteries of “the World’s borough,” one can find gnarled chipotles wedged into unassuming tamales, aromatic Thai curries studded with bird’s-eye chilies, tingly bowls of mapo tofu and crunchy empanadas doused in green sauce. It’s not surprising that Queens now has its own hot sauce: Queens 7 Hot Sauce, made from peppers grown in public gardens across the borough. 

Food trucks, trailers and carts are nearly everywhere. Somebody is making these things in masses, and I wanted to know who and where.  

My quest lead me to Ozone Park and to Jack Beller, the guy in charge of 800BuyCart, a division of Worksman, which primarily builds industrial bicycles.

Birch Coffee Co-Owners Paul Schlader (left) and Jeremy Lyman. Photo courtesy of Birch Coffee

Life lessons learned behind the counter at a Queens bagel shop

In the 1980s, Fred the Baker was a popular commercial character. He was a short man with a bushy mustache. As he left his home each morning in a sleep-deprived stupor, he would mumble “Time to make the doughnuts,” and then head to Dunkin’ Donuts to do just that.

Before it was city, New York City was farmland. Sheep really grazed in Sheep Meadow; journalist and photographer Jacob Riis, for whom Jacob Riis Park in Rockaway Park is named, documented Manhattanites in shantytowns tending to their livestock. But by the end of the 19th century, much of the land had been leveled and built over.

One brisk Saturday in late February, banners reading “Indonesian Food Bazaar” hung across the gates of St. James Episcopal Church in Elmhurst.

Inside, vendors with overflowing tins and food-cooking contraptions lined the walls. One stand run by a husband-wife team had an ice-shaving device, electric griddle and stations for frying noodles.

“We don’t have a restaurant,” said the husband, Andi Satanto. “We just do it because we love it.”

This month, we're proud to present the Bread & Grains issue—dedicated to all manner of doughs, dosas and baked desserts made in Queens. To coincide with the print issue (you'll be able to pick up a print copy very soon!), every weekday throughout the month of February, we're featuring a different bakery in the borough. Some are old standbys, and some are new and on the rise, but each one reflects the diverse and independent spirit of Queens.

It’s about the work, not the awards, at this woman-owned Thai restaurant in Woodside

There’s nothing grayer than an airport on an overcast spring day, and at first glance the JetBlue departures area at JFK’s Terminal 5 is no exception. Looping elevated highways blend seamlessly into drab skies, and the windows of the concrete control towers seem to absorb rather than reflect the clouds.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes—festa dei sette pesce, in the original Italian—is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, it’s a feast; and yes, there’s a lot of fish. There just aren’t always seven fish, and there’s not only fish. For Giuseppe D’Aguanno—the eponymous Joe of Joe’s Fish Market, in Middle Village—seven is practically just an appetizer; it wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without “15, 16, 17 kinds” of fish, he said. 

On a small patch of land in Flushing, between a funeral home and a brick apartment building, sits the Voelker Orth Museum, a charming Victorian house, beautifully preserved to reflect its era. For one late-summer day each year, volunteers join the museum’s small staff in the adjacent garden to harvest the grapes dangling from the arbor. They’ll clean the fruit, pick out stems and turn the grapes into juice, the main ingredient in a signature punch that the museum serves at its many events.

Kaya Jam
Lion City Coffee

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.

This month, we're proud to present the Bread & Grains issue—dedicated to all manner of doughs, dosas and baked desserts made in Queens. To coincide with the print issue (you'll be able to pick up a print copy very soon!), every weekday throughout the month of February, we're featuring a different bakery in the borough.

The Last Supper Series began as a passion project, bridging the formality of portraiture with the vivacity of food. With our increased societal focus on food and the desire to have a closer, more personal relationship with agriculture, we wanted our stories to document a cast of characters, with equal weight given to both food and diners. The portraits were taken immediately after consuming a meal we prepared for our friends. Our photographs reflect a conversation between the eaters and the eaten.