King David Bakery

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.

If bread is the staff of life, King David has been an elemental part of Kew Gardens Hills since 1997. That’s when the Murdakhayev brothers opened their tiny hearth-warmed bakery, soon after immigrating to New York City from Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Two yawning tandoor clay ovens—which Gabriel and Dovid built by hand, mind you—serve as the nucleus of the business, their walls lined with discs of sesame-speckled dough that bake and blister into smoky obi non bread, with signature hollow centers. Equally popular are samsa, flaky triangular pastries stuffed with cardamom-scented pumpkin, earthy mushrooms or mashed potato, as well as noni toki, a Bukharan Jewish flatbread, crisp and thin as a cracker, that gets its bowl-like contours from being shaped on the back of a wok. Notably, King David was also the first kosher establishment on their block, quickly asserting the bakery as a go-to supplier of bread for numerous synagogues in the community. Which is to say, their roots run deep. When a five-alarm blaze tragically engulfed it (along with 14 of its neighbors) in 2016, King David was eventually able to rebuild, partly owing to local support.

3359 67-03 Main St., Flushing
718.969.6165