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I went to a hidden food festival deep in Queens for a taste of New York City's best food festival, which pays homage to Asia's world-famous night markets
I went to a hidden food festival deep in Queens for a taste of New York City's best food festival, which pays homage to Asia's world-famous night markets
Ben GilbertAug 3, 2019, 18:47 IST
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Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
Every year, from April to October, New York City's best food festival happens nearly every Saturday night.
The Queens Night Market is a massive celebration of the borough's diversity - it features vendors from all over the world serving dishes from all over the world.
We visited the Queens Night Market on a recent Saturday for a few bites and a lot of photographs.
Whether you're a native New Yorker or a first-time visitor, the weekly food celebration should be at the very top of your to-do list. For the last several years, the Queens Night Market has connected local, small food vendors from Queens with anyone looking for a delicious bite.
Last Saturday, my partner and I headed to historic Corona, Queens to eat dinner and document the festivities:
The Queens Night Market sets up shop in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a historic NYC park created by Robert Moses in the early 20th century.
The first thing you need to know about the Queens Night Market is that it's located at the New York Hall of Science. If you see the rockets, you're in the right place.
You'll also probably smell the event before you arrive. Let your nose guide you — if the crowds of other people have already — to the Queens Night Market, which is just around the back of the Hall of Science.
Entering the Queens Night Market is overwhelming. There are suddenly dozens of booths with all different types of food. At this stall, La Brasa, skewers of beef and chicken were being grilled up en masse alongside whole ears of corn.
As the name implies, the event happens every Saturday night. Given that we went in mid-July, the light held on until pretty late — we arrived around 8 pm ET.
The first Queens Night Market was held back in 2015, and the mission has stayed the same ever since: "To represent as many countries as possible with our food," founder John Wang told Insider in 2018.
As globalist as that message sounds, it's a distinctly local message in Queens — the NYC borough is one of the world's most ethnically diverse urban areas. The Queens Night Market is intentionally representative of its borough.
The weekly event is free, and vendors have a hard ceiling on prices: No individual item can cost more than $5.
Attendance varies wildly, from local teens taking selfies to out-of-towners who smartly made time for New York City's least pretentious, most diverse, most affordable food event.
Let's get back to the food for a moment — it's hard not to stop and gawk at this marvel of food engineering.
An especially popular treat is the twisted potato, aka the tornado potato, originally made popular in the streets of South Korea at the same type of night market that the Queens Night Market pays homage.
There are sweet options as well, of course — Janie's pie-crust cookies might be the best thing I ate all night. There's an almost puff pastry-like consistency, which makes them shockingly light considering they're also filled with pie filling.
Another particularly popular stall: Caribbean Street Eats, which serves up a fried shark sandwich alongside homemade juices.
If I'm being honest, I was barely able to scratch the surface of the many delights at the Queens Night Market — with over 50 food vendors, many serving multiple items, it's simply not possible to be exhaustive without many, many visits.
The good news is you can experience the Queens Night Market yourself for free — this weekend! — through October 26. Check out a tour of the market below that our friends at Insider put together in 2018:
