54-46, that's my number: the Queens thread

I like junky indian ok...but a lot of those places are pretty dire. The good food's all in Iselin, Edison, Hicksville, Jersey City etc.

edison otm

I'm one of those awful people who likes anything if it's spicy enough and jackson diner vindaloo is pretty spicy

another queens favorite of mine (and some ilxors from FAPs past can attest) was taverna kyclades on ditmars. yum grilled octopus!

http://www.tavernakyclades.com/

Holla! My library system actually sort of sucks, but thanks for the shout-out.

Seaburn is either going out of business or renovating. It's a used book store that never has/had anything good in it.

Is Aubergine closed now?

I had a horrible experience at M Wells. I went alone and they made me sit at the "community" table.

Ate at Delhi Palace in Jackson Heights the other day--it's a solid, though unremarkable choice.

Anyone have any good Filipino or other food recs near the Woodside library?

31-45

For the record, I was the first person to write a yelp review of De Mole.

i hope this goes on your tombstone dan

nah aubergine's still open

our favorite place near the library is probably quaint

wayyyy better burgers than donovan's

i just googled the street where my astoria guy lived and it's gentrified so much!

35-14, i believe? all those buildings look the same.

I don't know. On a good day I'll take Donovan's over anybody else. And I have had them at Quaint. I wish they had a larger and more varied menu. Other then that it's a great place. I've been to dinner a few times and always get the roast chicken with gratin potatoes.

Good filipino? I don't know. Payag has gotten mixed reviews. Went once, didn't know what to order, was underwhelmed. Have had breakfast at Engelines, it was good but mostly avoid the places due to low vegetarian friendliness.

Best places around Woodside library...Donovan's obviously, Rico Pan has great cheap empenadas and arepas and other treats. La Flor of course, for breakfast/lunch/brunch. Dinner is good too but more pricey. Rumphool across the street from Donovan's is really good Thai. Not as good as Srip or Chao, but better then anything in Brooklyn!

Cuckoo's Nest for Irish pub grub.

35-14 what? Astoria is a good place to visit to get a meal, but not somewhere I'd want to live. Very euro-trashy! Favorite greek is way up in Ditmars at the very end of queens just across from Astoria park and under the Hellgate bridge...Agnanti Mezze.

roommate always used to suggest fiesta grill for filipino, we never went but it's supposed to be cheap. sorta far from the library though.

ditmars.

yeah astoria feels way more euro-white than gentrified-white

though there are more $$$ restaurants

We love Arepas Cafe in Astoria as well. Same basic thing as Caracas but less hipsters and crowds and instead 1 delicious spicy mystery sauce, they have 2 slightly less mysterious delicious sauces.

The only real sign of gentrification, if you read gentrification as affluent white hipsters instead of affluent white euros (or even affluent white midtown office worker types) is Sparrow and maybe that bar that has deep fried pickles, what's it called?

But Astoria has always had certain amounts of gentrification going on, but always from a different angle. Like there's Astoria "hipsters" who all think they're too cool for sceney Williamsburg (actually just jealous!) and you have people from Long Island who work in midtown that figure Astoria is a good compromise. I'm sorry, I can be such an Astoria hater. But my girlfriend and I always play this game about labeling people as "hipsters" or "queens hipsters", which isn't to say a "queens hipster" is just a hipster who lives in queens. It's a totally different breed. For instance we have more in common with your classic brooklyn hipster then with "queens hipsters". Of course we lived in Brooklyn first.

So sad. We are just talking about food. I love Taverna Cyklades--a little more for the atmosphere than the food. It's on Ditmars around 34th St. I like the place near the park for atmosphere, not so much for food.

Best thing to happen to Astoria this year--the reopening of the Moving Image.

I co-started this thread. I can rant about white people if I want!

We'll try Taverna Cyklades. We had a decent meal at Philoxenia 2 years ago.

Astoria is a good place to visit to get a meal, but not somewhere I'd want to live. Very euro-trashy!

This is so lolsy. And true.

Astoria is a huge place though. I would say only the 30th avenue area could properly be called euro trashy (and that more so on the weekends). The ditmars area is almost sedate and suburban and the broadway area has more of a mix of Spanish and of course the Steinway area is Egyptian.

give me some examples of a "queens hipster."

signed,
brooklyn hipster for most of my life

Went to Ayada Thai recently, best Thai food I've had in the city.

I really do want to find out what's listed on the section of the Rumphool take-out menu that's only in Thai, though. Every time I look at it, it's like it's mocking me

I really do want to find out what's listed on the section of the Rumphool take-out menu that's only in Thai, though. Every time I look at it, it's like it's mocking me

find someone on the internet to translate it! l.a. has a restaurant called jitlada that became a big sensation when a diner made a translation project out of the "thai" (non-gringo) menu and shared it with the world.

not to derail the thread away from queens, but here's the post: http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=13933

And I've had that special Jitlada dish. The southern lamb curry. It was the spiciest most delicious thing I've ever eaten and I still dream about it.

Rumphool seams to be starting to at least put some of their specials in english on the whiteboard.

Ayada is good too, but I prefer Srip and Chao. I used to love Zabb but that was like 3 owners ago.

More on queens hipsters later.

sorry to keep discussing LA, but the deal with Jitlada is that it's this special southern menu that has nothing in common with what know of as regular thai food or the norther/issan styles that are so popular now. Seeing as how Thailand borders Malaysia to the south, it made sense that the food basically tasted more malaysian...at least the dish I had had an earthy/rendang quality to it.

I've been going to the Malaysian and Indonesian places in Elmhurst a lot recently as well, but with mixed results. It's particularly tough because the two people I go with are not meat eaters.

More on queens hipsters later.

There was a great Thai restaurant in Astoria, but it closed down--Poodams.

I don't think there are any hipsters in Queens, not in Astoria anyway. There are annoying college students and recent grads. There might be hipsters in LIC/Sunnyside?

There have always been hipsters sprinkled throughout Astoria. They just don't out. If they did they'd move to Williamsburg.

Poodams was pretty good.

Sunnyside has a few hipsters. LIC doesn't have many left, it's too expensive to live there and overrun by skyscraper dwelling ex-manhattanites. I once met a woman who moved out to sunnyside to save some money. She did her grocery shopping, went to the gym, at dinner, went to the dry cleaner...all in manhattan.

LIC always seems like it has lots of hipsters around PS1 but presumably none of them live nearby

She did her grocery shopping, went to the gym, at dinner, went to the dry cleaner...all in manhattan.

there are so many grocery stores / restaurants / dry cleaners / gyms around here...what a weird way to live your life.

you know what could be a really hip area? blissville. it's so isolated and weird. if I were in charge of queens hipsters I would propose taking over blissville.

pretty crappy transit options tho.

also you will probably get cancer, but that hasn't stopped people from moving to greenpoint

nah, seriously all the studies of the newtown waste issues has the problem spreading directly south and west into greenpoint. Nothing towards queens.

There are tons of brooklyn hipster artists types who have art studios/work in LIC, but don't live there. A few do but not many.

In the years I've lived here, I've seen a few hipster types move up to the south side of sunnyside thinking "hey, it's close to greenpoint! I can bike to Bushwick from here!". (not speculation here, talking about actual people I know!)

Then they get bored and move back.

People of Queens, I ask you:

Is it possible/likely to find an apartment that is
- within a 30-40 min commute of midtown east
- 2 or more bedrooms
- in a relatively safe neighborhood
- with a decent grocery store and a few decent places to eat
- and maybe a little green space too
- for under $1800 a month or less?

And if so, best places to look?

why do queens ppl (apart from vp) not fancy pints

hurting I had to move recently and looked at basically every queens CL posting for a couple weeks so I have a pretty good idea of western queens prices at the moment...I'd say 'absolutely'

except for the green space thing, there's no green space in most of the better neighborhoods in queens

ok I can budge on the green space

wanted to go to the last fap but was busy :( xp

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/abo/2231038895.html

etc.

I concluded recently that there exists an unreasonable 'Brooklyn premium' that you pay in almost every neighborhood in Brooklyn just by virtue of it being in Brooklyn and regardless of whether it actually possesses any of that Brooklyn-ness that everyone seems to be looking for these days. I've decided I want to avoid that premium.

I've always wanted to live at the Bliss St stop.

Hurting, I looked recently (in Astoria) for a 2 bedroom in the 1600 range, and the prospects were dire. We do have ample green space here though.

The typical commuter neighborhoods are lic, Astoria, sunnyside, woodside, and Jackson heights. If you want to go a little further out, you could try forest hills and/or kew gardens. Any of these should have enough services/infrastructure for you.

I'm w/ dan when it comes to astoria, nice place to visit but didn't consider moving there when we had to move again recently. just about anywhere in the sunnyside-woodside-jackson heights corridor is gonna have some good restaurants and a grocery store + is gonna be safe + is gonna get you to midtown reliably fast. the 7 is actually the most frequent train on the system.

I live in woodside. HUGE (relatively) 2 bedroom apt. Safe building. Across the street from a park (doughboy). Great neighborhood. 7 Train. 7 express. R and V and LIRR. 1500/mo. Been here for 5 years though, but still.

Considering Sunnyside, parts of Woodside and Jackson Heights, you'd have to work hard to find an expensive dangerous area with nothing to eat!

LIRR is pricey but they don't always take your tickets, and it's 10 minutes from 61st st Woodside to Penn station.

If you want to be more adventurous, deals can be found in Elmhurst and Corona, but I'm a big Sunnyside/Woodside/Jackson Heights booster, obv.

Downsides to these Queens neighborhoods other than not having that Brooklyn-ness (which might even be a plus)?

Sunnyside residents can also join Sunnyside Park, but other then those, not a lot of green space that isn't a cemetery. Though Flushing Corona isn't far. It's not pretty but it's got history, the panarama of NY, the museum, worlds fair relics and a great little zoo.

2 or more bedrooms

hurting are u hinting at something

These areas don't have "brooklyness", which I define as....

No bars that aren't irish pubs or mexican sports bars.

No record stores or book stores.

Not many traditional brunch places.

It's worth noting that I have a car and go to Brooklyn several times a week. Sometimes several times a day. If I was 25 and single and had no car, I'd probably still be in Boerum Hill. Or living off Cortelyou St. in Ditmas Park which has way less to offer than queens, but is still hipper.

But it's not hard to get to Brooklyn without a car. You can bike easily. Or take the 7 to the G.

And there's 1 bus that goes from sunnyside to greenpoint but they recently cut back service to no weekends or late nights.

Melody lanes in sunset park looks hella charming, but the fuck am i going to Sunset park

it's in the wrong borough for starters

i have been to Sunset Park once, it took forever on the subway. I've made it to Philly in less time on mass transit. or that's what it felt like.

I did my bachelor party at melody lanes. It has a really old school bar that’s popular. I was already in queens but all the guests were in Brooklyn. It was the post college DJ dudes vs the college indie rockers. We went to dinosaur bbq in gowanus first and it was really disappointing.

Should’ve done Whitestone and little pepper instead.

Or Legend of Taste (is that still there?). I never made it, but still remember a friend describing it in the manner of recent convert to a religion.

omg legend of taste rules
too out of the way to hit regularly to spot after fort totten excursions

*but is my go-to spot

I have to go soon.

i have been to Sunset Park once, it took forever on the subway. I've made it to Philly in less time on mass transit. or that's what it felt like.

― A street taco cart named Des'ree (Deflatormouse), Tuesday, February 27, 2024 5:00 PM (yesterday)

you can just take the commuter van from flushing

flushing is a solid hour from me on the subway lol

little spice looks amaaaaaazing too, dan when is your guidebook coming out srsly

north of the expressway is tough for pedestrians tho, not that bay terrace isn't

was thinking of doing a fort totten day next week actually

Little Pepper requires a car, or bus.

i went to little pepper after the pete wells review came out. thought it was OK. it's definitely got that 'home-cooked' feel to it. the sichuan restaurants in flushing are comparable. so don't feel too bad if you can't get up to college point.

I have eaten at Little Pepper more than any other Chinese restaurant. Their tripe and tongue in chili sauce is all-time.

Uncle Zhou was maybe my favorite restaurant. Their knife shaved noodles were amazing. Rabbit or Chicken in Big Tray (rabbit or chicken that had been hacked into little pieces (bones and all) and wok fried with a mega ton of dried chili pepper and peppercorn). They closed pre-pandemic and I just found out they had moved to TX.

https://sunnysidepost.com/its-confirmed-shake-shack-is-coming-to-sunnyside-this-year

ugh, shake shack moving into the void left by the deeply missed Mangal Kebab.

Shake Shack sucks is a hill I will die on. I would rather eat McDonalds.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/03/06/fbi-new-world-mall-eric-adams/

scandalous!

https://i.imgur.com/9mczvu2.jpeg

closed on our co-op today. officially a queens resident for life!

Congrats!

Welcome!

lol, that’s what I said in 2013 when we bought ours. Gateway to the suburbs.

In seriousness though, congrats!

Thanks to this thread, I took my visiting nephew to Sripraphai a couple of weeks ago! It was fine. I couldn't remember what the recommended dishes were but my taste is not that adventurous. The funny part is that a week later, one of my very culinarily advanced co-workers was being secretive about her supposed secret best Thai spot in Queens...which was guess where lol. Thanks, ilx!

ha, best kept secret Sripraphai.

I haven't been in years but I was underwhelmed when I went, whereas I thought Ayada was great.

Nothing there is bad and a few things are great, some standards I like there, but not quite blow your mind like some of the newer places. Def far from a secret.