Czech beer, Himalayan cultural festivals and sari shops: how to explore NYC's most diverse borough

17.11.2023 - 13:45 / nationalgeographic.com

The most famous of New York City’s five boroughs is Manhattan. The hippest is Brooklyn. There’s the forgotten one (Staten Island) and the one that tourists only visit to go to a Yankees game (the Bronx). Then there’s the most interesting one: Queens, a borough of two-million-plus people and among the most ethnically diverse swathes of land in North America.

That diversity shows in its food. You come to Queens to eat at restaurants that take you back to an incredible meal you had in a village in Thailand, or the tacos you scarfed in Oaxaca, or the incendiary kimchi stew you slurped in Seoul. Or, in my case, to drink a Czech beer on tap at Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden, in the Astoria neighbourhood. I visit about twice a year to take myself back to the days I lived in Prague.

Queens was once home to hundreds of beer gardens and breweries, reflecting the 19^th-century immigration of Europeans. But anti-German sentiment after the First World War, then the Prohibition era, closed most of them. Bohemian Hall, opened in 1910, survived — perhaps because it’s Czech. On my visit, a pint of Budvar — the original Budweiser — is accompanied by a live band playing songs by Prince and Fleetwood Mac. It’s just one example of the ethnic anomalies in the borough.

(How to explore New York City's immigrant past through food)

There are still remnants of the Central and Eastern European immigration, but they’ve been largely eclipsed by the past quarter-century’s arrivals from the rest of the world. This is a borough where hundreds of tongues are heard, and where cash machines offer myriad languages with which to conduct your transaction.

After my beer, I hop on a Citi Bike — from New York’s bike-sharing programme — and take a pleasant ride through leafy Sunnyside Gardens - home to a Romanian and Moldovan community - the once-Irish neighbourhood Woodside and on to Elmhurst. My destination is Zaab Zaab, a Thai restaurant in the heart of Elmhurst’s ‘Little Thailand’. There I meet Joe DiStefano, who wrote 111 Places in Queens That You Must Not Miss and who leads food-focused walking tours in the borough. With a table full of Thai dishes in front of us — including a whole roasted fish, a super-spicy papaya salad with black crab, and spicier still duck larb — Joe declares why he loves the area so much: “The borough has helped New Yorkers be more open-minded to new foods and discovering new things. There is nothing else in North America that comes close to the rich diversity in Queens.”

After lunch, we wander into P’Noi Thai Thai Grocery (Woodside Ave), a diminutive store in the heart of Little Thailand. Its shelves overflow with curry paste, coconut milk and rice noodles. Working there is 65-year-old Ratri Sil Ratdochot, who beams