Jackson and His Heights
Living Inside an Unforeign Sunset
Has New York food media given up on Queens? Maybe I’m naive for thinking that culinary journalism was ever anything besides glorified copywriting for deep-pocketed PR agencies… but I seem to remember a time when things were different. When Ligaya Mishan was writing Hungry City, for example, or when Robert Sietsema was at the Village Voice, or at least when he was more active at Eater. Back then, I would read weekly reports of the many exciting hole-in-the-walls thriving in the shadow of the 7 train, my mouth agape, saliva pooling, like a Looney Tunes character. As a broke kid, desperate to eat well, learning about the existence of places like Nepali Bhancha Ghar, Hug Esan, Cheburechnaya, or Lamoon (RIP) was like receiving news from heaven itself. Thusly I was educated.
It was over the course of those meals that my teenage ass learned NYC was bigger than the L Train. After a decade spent bumming around Brooklyn, finally I admitted to myself that the most interesting part of NYC to me was Queens — and not Ridgewood, either. So I moved to Jackson Heights, a little over two years ago. Even as a resident, the neighborhood remains a source of learning and wonder — new restaurants open all the time, street food comes and goes with the seasons. Despite the incredible dynamism, it seems few people in food media want to trek out here anymore. The same six restaurants from pre-pandemic days are still recycled in their lists, over and over again. So boring.
The “why” is obvious: food media has gone the way of all legacy media. With social media to compete with, they no longer have revenue from a captive readership; without that revenue, magazines and newspapers literally do just have to do glorified copywriting in order to stay afloat. Meanwhile, a new guard — made from influencers and Substacks — has formed. These smaller, more specialized operations can afford to do cool things, still. So here we are.
Before getting into food, I want to make a few general, introductory remarks about Jackson Heights itself. I think it’s necessary because, when I talk about this neighborhood with people from the rest of the city, they often have confused, outdated ideas about what it’s like here.
The most common assumption I encounter is that Jackson Heights is predominantly an Indian neighborhood — this is no longer true. As I understand it, Indian immigration to Jackson Heights began in the 70s, picked up in the 80s, and peaked in the 90s. It was a wave of immigration, so I’m told, driven by mostly middle class Gujaratis; now those communities have built up some wealth, and they’ve left for greener pastures and more square footage. Today, you’ll find a much larger Indian community out on Nassau County, or in New Jersey, than in Jackson Heights.
So, if Jackson Heights is no longer Little India, what is it? “Diverse” would be a fair, albeit lame, answer. To be more specific, we might wanna zoom out a bit. Jackson Heights is hardly an island. In fact, it’s at the center of a cluster of interconnected neighborhoods, which includes Elmhurst, East Elmhurst (a confusing name, because it’s actually to the north), Woodside, and Corona. Of these neighborhoods, Jackson Heights is the most developed, with the most housing, and with Queens’ largest transit hub. At Roosevelt Ave/74th St the E, F, M, R, and 7 trains all converge, plus various buses, and the shuttle to LaGuardia. Around the station especially, it is a bustling neighborhood. Brooklyn feels like the suburbs, by comparison.
To give a general demographic picture, and to simplify things a bit, you should picture Jackson Heights and its surroundings as three zones, with the Roosevelt Ave. train at its center:
Working class South/East Asian immigrants on the South and West sides of JH, bordering Elmhurst and Woodside
Working class Latino immigrants on the East side, bordering Corona
Middle class families of all stripes (with an aging American-born population being replaced by upwardly mobile immigrants, and ex-Brooklynites) in the pre-war apartments and Tudor-style houses to the North, bordering East Elmhurst
Most of the interesting food here lies in two of these three zones — I’ll let you guess which. But in terms of pure weirdness, group three shouldn’t be discounted. As I understand it, Jackson Heights was first developed pre-war for Anglos priced out from the Upper East Side. They fled, in turn, when immigrant German, Irish, and Italian families moved into the neighborhood. Even today, many of my elderly neighbors come from these backgrounds, having lived in the neighborhood for half a century. In terms of commercial presence, traces of that history remain in strange, incongruous ways; like our 130-year old soda fountain on 37th Ave, or a legendary Irish dive bar, which has managed to stay open for decades, despite being on a block where everyone else is a teetotaling Muslim, speaking Bengali. Nearby, you can still find signs of a once-thriving Irish presence in neighboring Woodside, while Corona has a number of famous, old-school Italian restaurants and sandwich shops. But, of course, they’re on their way out.
Maybe I will write about old school Queens holdouts, if I’m ever sick of eating tacos and biryani. By any measure, however, the real story of Jackson Heights today (especially in terms of food) is first and foremost about its Asian and Latino communities. In Jackson Heights proper, the former is comprised mostly of the aforementioned Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Punjabi, Nepalese, and Tibetan communities; though, if you include neighboring Woodside and Elmhurst, you also find many people from Thailand, China, the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bhutan etc. This Asian presence represents a sizable population — around 15% of a neighborhood of 150,000+, so somewhere around 20-25,000 people.
While significant, that number is dwarfed by the Latino diaspora. At ~65% of the local population, just about every Spanish-speaking Latin/South American country is represented in the area between Jackson Heights and Corona. The majority of people come from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, but you will certainly see restaurants and bakeries representing Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Argentina as well. Once the weather gets nice, 37th Ave. shuts down every Sunday afternoon for a parade featuring a different Hispanic country — and even when the weather’s not nice, from 74th St. through to Citi Field, Spanish is the only language you’ll hear spoken.
With those preliminaries out of the way, my goal here is to report in a more in-depth way about the many, many restaurants in the larger Jackson Heights orbit over the coming months. It’s crazy to me how little attention some of these spots have gotten. Or maybe it’s all on TikTok now, and I’m old-fashioned for thinking written coverage has any impact? My hope is that I can do a few deep dives into some special spots, as well as come up with reasonably thorough lists, to enumerate the best options.
Pull up!
