Super Heroes

Just about anyone raised in or around New York City – and who loves eating – can tell you about Italian sandwiches. Not long ago, when we raised the subject with some of our dining buddies, in person and online, we were overwhelmed with recommendations. Our list of a few favorite sandwich shops quickly grew to more than two dozen that, we were told, we really ought to try. To be sure, this crowd understood that by "Italian," we didn't mean sandwiches native to Italy itself – not panuozzi, not schiacciate, not even panini. We were thinking instead of their hefty, even humungous U.S. descendants, the sort that are served on a long, flat wheat-flour roll, typically one with a chewy crumb and a crisp crust.

Angel Indian Restaurant

"Simple but good." This guiding principle is evident from the moment we step into Jackson Heights’ Angel Indian Restaurant, where the small dining room is almost bare of decoration. Until our food arrives at the table, the most eye-catching sights – just barely visible above the tall partition that screens the seating area from the open kitchen – are the flames that leap from a pan as chef and owner Amrit Pal Singh puts the finishing touches to our meal. It's unlikely that the flames leapt quite as high at home in Pathankot, a city in the northern Indian state of Punjab, where Amrit was born in the mid-1980s. (Even today, few home kitchens are outfitted with a high-powered commercial stovetop and ventilation system.)

Bhanchha Ghar

Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) is the only four-time winner of New York City’s annual Momo Crawl. Early one afternoon, more than a thousand event goers fanned out from the block-long, pedestrian-only Diversity Plaza, at the western edge of Jackson Heights, and called on dozens of nearby restaurants, cafés, trucks and carts. Each dished out at least one style of momo, a filled dumpling best-known from Tibet and Nepal. Several hours later, after momo-crawlers had returned to the plaza and the popular vote had been tallied, Yamuna Shrestha, the owner of Bhanchha Ghar, once again proudly raised the Momo Belt high. The decorated yak-hide belt returned to its glass case, mounted on the back wall of the upstairs dining area, where it overlooks an open kitchen and a handful of tables.

Rincon Criollo

"Everything had to remain the same." In the dining room of Rincon Criollo, a Cuban restaurant in Corona, Esther Acosta recalls the pledge that she and her older brother, Rudesindo ("Rudy") Acosta, made to their great-uncles when they took the reins of the family business. The surrounding community has changed in the years since the restaurant opened in 1976. Today, it's easier to find chaulafan from Ecuador, chalupas from Mexico or chow from many other Latin American countries than to find the shredded, slow-simmered flank steak of a traditional Cuban ropa vieja.

Leticias

Our first encounter with the chaulafan from Leticias, an Ecuadorian restaurant in Corona, was at the 2021 season opener of the nearby Queens Night Market. As it cooked outdoors – in a wok over high heat, a testament to the dish's origins among Chinese immigrant workers – the fried rice was a dramatic sight. Our second encounter was outdoors, too, at sidewalk table, although the wok was confined to the kitchen. We didn't watch the fried rice as it cooked, but the presentation told the same story of culinary connection: Our chaulafan was served in a deep bowl that mimicked a Chinese takeout container.

Corn Dogs & Dumplings

Just to the east of Flushing, the home of New York City's largest and fastest-changing Chinatown, is a sprawling neighborhood that boasts many of the city's most interesting Korean restaurants and food shops. We hesitate to call it a Koreatown. Compared with the few dense blocks of Manhattan's Koreatown, this part of Queens has a more open feel, with modest buildings, wider streets and more sunlight. Here, in the late 1700s, the Murray family owned a nursery of more than 100 acres filled with trees and other plants imported from around the world. In the late 1800s, when the nursery gave way to residential development, the burgeoning neighborhood was named for the family: Murray Hill.

Foda Egyptian Sandwiches

Hamburgers and ketchup, hot dogs and mustard. Many of us who grew up in the United States learned these food pairings early in life, at ballparks, backyard cookouts and birthday parties. In our case, we encountered falafel and tahini sometime later, probably at the urging of adventuresome schoolmates. Ahmed Foda – or just "Foda" for short – serves his falafel, too, with the familiar ground-sesame twang of tahini. But at Foda Egyptian Sandwiches, his year-old Astoria food cart, the fritters are called tameya (tah-May-ah) and rely on fava beans rather than chickpeas. This is what distinguishes the Egyptian style of falafel from that of its Levantine neighbors.