Opening any business comes with a side of risk and reward, but especially a restaurant. We asked Adriana Morote and Peter Guillen to explain why they felt compelled to create Ayahuasca. Here is the manifesto of their restaurant. 

Growing up, my first-generation American, secular Ashkenazi family observed the major Jewish holidays, especially those registering high on the established culinary traditions scale. We feasted on Rosh Hashanah with apples and honey before long, festive meals punctuated with Grandma’s traditional German apple cake. At Passover seders we ate her famous “sinker” matzo balls along with gefilte fish, roughly chopped Ashkenazi charoset and of course, matzoh. 

Sandwiched between a Chinese jewelry shop and a Vietnamese beauty parlor on Roosevelt Avenue, near Flushing’s Main Street, the Soy Bean Chan Flower Shop (it’s “Chan,” though the awning says “Chen”) has lines out the door and off its tiny, dusty drive-by window during rush hour and on weekends. These queuing customers aren’t here for the flowers, but for one of the freshest, tastiest soybean puddings around.

Nepalese immigrants are making their mark on Queens. In 2011, a New York Daily News report said that so many Nepalese immigrants were coming to Queens that they had earned their own census category. That was seven years ago, when the Nepalese community was mainly concentrated in Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Elmhurst and Woodside.

If female composters in Queens reflect what’s happening in the industry overall, women are a far cry from the “pretty lonesome bunch” that Ginny Black found when she got her start in the field 25 years ago.

“Composting grew out of the traditional recycling arena and that was a male-dominated industry,” said Black, chair of the Composting Council Research and Education Foundation. But they’ve come a long way, baby.

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.

Travel, exploring and a keen sense of adventure—these have all been core to my personality since I was a little girl. I’d excitedly receive postcards and travel tales from my father as he journeyed around the world on military, government and, later, church business. I knew one day I’d jet around the globe too. It was in those formative years that my parents instilled in me the whole “it’s impossible to be bored in this great big world with an imaginative brain” philosophy.

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.

If you were to write a movie about Hando Youssouf, the first scene might be of a 17-year-old Indian-Chinese-Vietnamese student answering an advertisement in a French newspaper. Zoom in and you would see the words in print asking the reader to consider coming to Scandinavia to go door-to-door selling photos.

Steam billows from every crevice of the shiny metal box in the shop’s center. Joe Rong, the owner of Joe’s Steam Rice Roll, stands over it, patiently. He is waiting for the seemingly magical creation that is his steamed rice roll: tender and thin, rice paper filled with lightly seasoned ground pork and chives. 

Three-Month Cookie Club Subscription
Sexy Batch

Each box has thirteen cookies, baked from scratch in Queens and ranging from the classic (chocolate chip) to the creative (fig-and-grana padano). Plus, subscriptions are available across the continental U.S. Your friend with the insatiable sweet tooth will thank you.

When terrorists use random violence, they leave widespread uncertainty and fear among those impacted. This applies even if that effect is indirect, such as the impact of the recent white terrorism in Texas and at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California on immigrants in Queens. 

One Sunday in late April, anyone who wandered down to the tweedy, subterranean auditorium of the Queens Central Library in Jamaica lucked into a pretty fantastic lunch. Folding tables offered, among other delicacies, slow-fermented fennel-sesame bread, shrimp empanadas and cold soba tossed with shredded carrots and kimchi. For dessert: tart-sweet tamarind balls, with shiny black seeds to spit out.

Check back for more details as we prepare for the sweepstakes announcement on November 27th!
 

When he opened Tropical Revival in October 2016, Albert Teekasingh didn’t take out ads in the local weeklies or put up fliers. Instead, he delivered trays of soft, buttery cornbread to all the neighborhood schools and businesses. It proved a prudent strategy.

Publisher's Note: In light of the continued discussion on immigration and the rights of undocumented workers, particularly in relation to the food service industry, I asked Neil Chiragdin to file two follow-up stories on what has happened since the first ICE raid at Tom Cat Bakery. The original story was published in our summer issue. —Claudia

Rife with culinary escapades to shame any basic steak-dinner-and-chocolate-dessert game, Queens is where to get your lover’s heart racing for Valentine’s Day food. Edible Queens scooped some exotic places from Greg Gouras and Jo Mae “Jumi” Oraa, the adventurous couple behind Queens food blog Food and Footprints for their suggestions to thrill intrepid and hungry cupid devotees in the Royal Borough.

Smells of a morning full of baking provide a nice respite from the clamor of Austin Street. Fresh-baked breads and muffins sit coyly on sheet trays lining the lavender wall of this tiny Asian-inspired pastry shop. Owner and chef Chris Tang opened Violet’s Bake Shoppe last January in a homey space evoking that “Keep Calm and Drink Bubble Tea” credo in even the most recalcitrant customer; offering a wealth of fresh loose teas as well as using pure cane sugar and cream in their bubble teas.

If you’ve lost a loved one, you know that pang of regret. If you’d just had more time, you would have learned those stories and recipes that are now irretrievable. Flushing native Caroline Shin grew up with an urgency about that very thing, and it was the impetus behind her award-winning, documentary-style web series, “Cooking with Granny,” starting with her own kimchi-queen Korean grandma, Sanok Kim, in 2011.

Nothing tells the story of a person like what they eat or don’t eat, how much of it they eat, how spicy it is, or whether it’s a mostly liquid diet. It’s biographic data that, as Laura Shapiro points out in the opening pages of What She Ate, isn’t often included because “biography, as it’s traditionally practiced, tends to honor the old-fashioned custom of keeping a polite distance from food.” 

Inside Astoria's speakeasy, The Last Word.

Where are the city’s best food trucks? You might think Midtown, with its weekday lunch crowds, or those curated seasonal markets like Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg. These spots are undoubtedly good. But what of the diversity of Queens, where immigrants who know how to make their food have assembled low-budget businesses to appeal—at the right price—to their compatriots who live here and miss foods from home?

Throughout June, LGBTQ people all over the world take to the streets, bars and beaches to celebrate Pride month. The NYC Pride March in Manhattan may be the city’s most well-known celebration, but Queens’ own parade is nothing to sneeze at. Drawing more than 40,000 spectators, it is the second largest Pride event in the New York metro area.