Original subtitles

♪

♪

♪ I took a walk through this ♪

♪ Beautiful world

♪ Felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪

♪ Found something good in this ♪

♪ Beautiful world

♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

♪ La, la

♪ Sha la, la, la, la

♪ Sha la, la, la, la

♪ Sha la, la, la

♪ Sha la, la, la, la

♪ Sha la, la, la, la, la

Hi, how are you?

Good morning, my friend. How are you?

This mine? Yes.

♪

I start my day; I wake up at 2:00,

come to the garage around 3:00.

Get ready to go

on my way to take the Queensboro Bridge.

♪

♪

Okay.

Showtime.

Just across the East River from Manhattan,

where I live,

just over there,

is an enchanted wonderland,

an international crossroads, a stewpot of neighborhoods

filled with the languages, cultures,

traditions, and flavors of many lands.

Hey, how you doing? Morning.

My morning ritual goes something like this:

regular coffee and a doughnut;

maybe a cruller, I'm feeling wild and crazy.

But just across the river, the options are endless.

♪

The next stop is Court Square.

♪

The 7 train winds over and through Queens

like a main cable.

Every stop can seem like another country,

another region.

♪

Get off at Roosevelt Avenue,

and you are gonna eat well for sure.

Example: this cart sells Ecuadorian food.

Hornado: roast pork with sublime crispy skin

straight from heaven.

Crunch, cru... Oh, that's the sound of victory right there.

Morcilla: blood sausage with potato cakes.

Oh, man. That's looking really good.

Gracias.

This is a working-class neighborhood.

People coming to and from work. Yep.

How often do you think the average person

eats at one of these things?

Lot of, like, the day laborers,

a lot of the men that are here, they might live in

these tiny apartments with a tiny shared kitchen.

They can't cook. Right.

They're not gonna go into the restaurants.

They don't have time for that.

So it's... for them, it might be even more

that they're eating on the streets.

Sean Basinski is the director of the Street Vendor Project.

Prior to going to law school, he built a pushcart

and sold burritos on the corner of 52nd and Park.

He founded SVP with a small grant

from Yale University Law School.

He lives in a tenement walkup apartment in Manhattan

with a bathtub in the kitchen,

you know, like most lawyers.

So if we did, like, a mile in here.

Yeah.

What would my options be nationality-wise?

It's incredible. I mean, you can have Tibetan

street food, and then there's Colombian arepas.

If you go up into Flushing,

and then there is the Chinese barbecue carts.

I don't know of anyplace in New York,

maybe even the world or the country,

that you can have such diversity on the street.

Matt Shapiro is another lawyer who represents

street vendors when they need legal help,

which in our nanny state current reality

is all too often.

Now, generally speaking,

to open up a cart on the street, you need a license?

You have to have a license for yourself,

and then you have to have a permit for the cart itself.

That's the problem.

And any spot?

Generally speaking, yes,

although there's lots of restrictions.

Manhattan is very much the, you know,

"not in my backyard" neighborhood in a lot of ways.

I mean, for this reason, Manhattan, in my view,

is a lot less interesting than Queens.

- Right. - This is a wonderland.

Yeah.

I mean, look what we got here.

You know, they're trying to change it, though.

And the more it does change,

the more the vendors are threatened, you know?

There's all this talk about "cleaning up" Roosevelt Avenue.

You know what that means.

If you get higher rent, nicer buildings,

they're not gonna want a street cart out in front.

That's sometimes the problems that vendors face.

Even if the spot is completely legal,

and we see it all the time, where there's building managers

that come out and say, "Hey, you know,

you gotta move; you can't be here."

They even call the police.

So what happens if that... When that occurs?

When it was me, you know, the young kid out of college,

I was ready for that. Right.

But if you're an immigrant who doesn't speak any English

and is realistically scared,

and they tell you to move, well, you're gonna move.

♪

In a perfect world, how many of these would there be?

I think the more diverse street food

we could have, the better.

The more pathways we can provide for people

to come and start a business and hopefully, you know,

after five or ten years,

maybe they'll have a restaurant, right?

I mean, we don't say there are too many restaurants, do we?

So why too many food vendors?

Too many affordable restaurants, goddamn it.

Hey, what's up, New York City?

How y'all doing?

♪ Inshallah, mashallah

♪ Hopefully no martial law

♪ Hai Allah, yo yallah

♪ Let's rock a show in Ramallah ♪

♪ Kick it with my homie when I'm out in Haifa ♪

♪ Kick it with Muhammed when I'm out in Jaffa ♪

♪ Oh, no, we're in trouble ♪

♪ TSA always wanna burst my bubble ♪

♪ Always get a random check when I rock the stubble ♪

♪

♪

♪

Himanshu Suri is better known as Heems,

half of the rap duo known as the Swet Shop Boys.

He was born and raised in Queens,

a living, breathing example

of the glorious mash-up that is this borough.

♪

So it seems just right

that a first-generation Indian dude

takes me to a Chinese dumpling spot

close to his Hindu temple.

Yu Garden Dumplings is everything you need in life.

So born and raised, Queens?

- Yep. - What neighborhood?

Most of my life I've been in Glen Oaks

and Bellerose, which is, like, further east.

Largely or mostly Indian?

Our neighborhood is mostly Punjabi

and then there was Christians from Kerala, Malayali,

and Pakistanis. Those three.

And next non-Indian neighborhood over?

More like Guyanese,

still Indo-Caribbean. Right. Right.

And then the other neighborhood,

like, whiter but still Indian.

So it's hard to escape us in Queens,

which is why I like it here.

♪

Spicy beef and tripes:

boiled pig tongue and tripe marinated in sugar and soy,

served cold with chili oil.

Traditional Indian food at home?

What about outside the house?

Because the food's so good at home,

we don't really go out to eat Indian food,

'cause it would just be my mom going, "Pssh!"

I could make better dal than this."

- Right. - So...

I'm in New York, man; it was, like, lo mein

and pizza when we weren't eating Indian food.

Lion's head meatballs: pork, ginger, soy.

So we used to come to Flushing

even when we moved out further east

because they didn't have grocery stores there.

My temple is over here,

and so even as we moved further out to Long Island,

we always end up coming back to here or Jackson Heights,

which are like these first places you come.

Sometimes I joke, I mean, Queens is so great and so diverse,

but it's also 'cause the airports are here.

So it's just like you get off of a 16-hour flight

with no money in your pocket from India,

and you're like, "Where am I gonna live?"

Well, I'm already here.

"So let's start with this place."

♪

Soup dumplings: piping hot

and filled with ground pork and near boiling broth.

This is why I come here.

Yeah, this is dumplings.

Oh, yeah.

So when you were growing up,

what was the ethno-national breakdown

of a typical class in school?

My high school was a public high school,

but it was maybe 70% East and South Asian,

mostly Chinese and Korean.

And all those kids end up going to Harvard.

All those kids end up going to NYU

and those types of schools.

And, you know, if the American dream is alive,

I think it's alive in places like Queens.

What do you mean by that?

That there still are people coming here with nothing

and making something out of it.

And as I kind of lose hope in the idea of,

like, diversity as a positive thing

or the idea of America as an open place,

I think in a place with so much race and diversity,

it gets in the way less here than it does in other places.

Will America as a whole look sooner or later like Queens?

I guess 2042 is the year that people of color

become the majority in this country.

Yep.

Seems like a long, long time away.

But yeah, that is the hope.

♪

♪

Get lost in Flushing for a while,

and behold the awesomeness.

♪

♪

♪

♪

If you're looking for amazing Chinese food

or Korean just like home,

well, Flushing is the place.

♪

This joint is high on the list, Geo Si Gi.

Cheers..

Josh Smookler and Cosme Aguilar

are both chefs and restaurateurs

operating in Queens.

Josh, a Korean man who was adopted

and raised by a Jewish family

owns the wildly popular

Long Island City restaurant Mu Ramen.

Did it take off right away?

It was successful right away?

Yes, pretty much immediately.

You know, I was cooking out of my house.

Then we were transporting all to this bagel shop.

We served from 7:00 to 9:30, ten seats at a time.

It was me in the kitchen; my wife out in the front.

And one day, somebody texted me, goes, "Congratulations."

I go, "For what?"

They go, "Pete Wells just gave you"

number one ramen in New York City."

So "New York Times" loves you.

And I saw the article, and I started crying.

♪

Cosme is the owner of Casa Enrique,

also in Long Island City.

It's the only Mexican restaurant in New York

with a Michelin star.

You didn't even do the smart thing.

The smart thing, of course,

would be to make shitty Mexican food

because we know that Americans

will always buy shitty Mexican food.

You started making really sophisticated,

really interesting Mexican food.

Well, why?

My brother come up with the idea

to open a Mexican restaurant.

And I told my brother, "Come on",

I'll never cook Mexican food, like, for restaurant."

So I started cooking for six months at home every single day,

trying to do different things,

and finally we open a Mexican restaurant.

But then you got a Michelin star.

Yeah.

For three years in a row.

Nice.

Both are fantastic,

but tonight we're eating Korean.

Gamja Tang: pork neck bone soup

with rice cakes, pork belly, kimchi, and spicy radish.

And kimchi and oysters.

So this dish right here, the Gamja Tang,

was the dish I had, like, three years ago.

It literally transplanted me back to Korea.

Yeah, but how old were you when you left?

When I came to America, I was six.

Were you raised observant Jew?

- Orthodox, yeah. - Orth...

You were raised Orthodox.

You still with the program?

No, not at all.

I'm eating pork right now.

Yeah, that's tough.

I mean, 'cause, you know, Koreans are pork crazy.

Korean food, where I didn't have much of it

growing up at all... In fact, kimchi was, like,

shunned from our household

because it stunk up the whole house.

Well, it's just not kosher too.

And it's not kosher either, so they...

- With the shellfish in there. - Yeah.

But now I still make Korean-style ramen

and then I have a matzo ball ramen.

Being raised Jewish, can't help it.

I think as cooks, we always go gravitate to what our DNA is.

So when are you opening a Korean restaurant?

I don't know anything about Korean food.

I just know I like it.

I gravitate towards those flavors.

♪

Galbi: short ribs marinated in soy,

garlic, and sesame oil.

Then grilled.

Meat candy.

♪

You ever investigate other neighborhoods?

The number of immigrants all over the world,

I mean, is, you know, extraordinary.

This funny thing. I was...

I have Caucasians working the line.

Yeah.

And then the Asians come in, they go,

"Oh, this isn't good.

You got a bunch of white guys."

I'm like, "What?"

I'm racist like that too.

- Really? - Yeah, I'm totally like that.

If I walk into a sushi restaurant,

I make racist assumptions about the place

if they're not Japanese.

Do you do the same thing when you go to a restaurant

and you see, like, let's say a Korean restaurant,

and if you only see white people,

then what do you think, it's not legit?

Eating at the Korean restaurant?

- Yeah. - You want the truth?

Yeah.

Of course I want the truth.

♪

♪

I'm an usher now for the Metro Christian Center.

♪

Some people say it's the most famous place

you've never heard of.

That's where we are.

Well, when you start getting out to the detail of it,

this is historic Neir's Tavern.

Back in the 1820s,

when Queens was still mostly farmland

and livestock rather than the 7 train

was what rumbled down what became Jamaica Avenue,

the manager of a racetrack called the Union Course

opened a nearby tavern to accommodate the gamblers

and layabouts who frequented his track.

It was called the Blue Pump Room.

In later iterations it became the Old Abbey,

the Union Course Tavern,

and finally Neir's Tavern.

The Neir family, German émigrés,

added a bowling alley, a ballroom, and a hotel

after the racetrack closed in 1898

and renamed the place Neir's Social Hall.

Today it's owned by this man,

lieutenant Loy Gordon of the FDNY.

You were born in Jamaica?

That's a funny thing.

I'm from the island of Jamaica,

and I moved to Jamaica, Queens.

Why, uh... why Jamaica Queens?

Well, my mom was here.

What did your mom do for a living?

What kind of work was she doing?

You know, she was... Didn't have

all the education in the world.

Uh, so you just had to do odds and ends,

had to clean floors and, uh, just do

whatever she had to do to get things going.

I think it's pretty much the similar story

of immigrants that come to the United States.

They come and work hard because it's the land of opportunity,

and they find a way to kind of make it out of the rut.

Yep.

Or at least using that platform to have

someone like me... Like their offspring

become a little bit more, right, than they were.

♪

Ordinarily, the story is,

"I'm a regular beer drinker at this joint,

"and the thought of it disappearing

"is, like, unbearable to me.

Where am I gonna drink now?"

But you're not that... That's not your story.

I knew that this place was important, you know?

I just felt something special.

And being someone that's from Queens,

something that's special like this shouldn't disappear.

♪

It was three days from closing down

when I walked into the place.

Wow.

The way it's located, someone

has to tell you about Neir's Tavern.

Someone has to say, you know,

"It's around the corner, to the left, to the right."

And if someone tell you about it,

I think they think you're worthy enough to discover

such a historic, you know, cool little place.

Now, it's historic for a lot of reasons,

not least, in my mind,

because the greatest American film

ever made was shot here.

A lot of it was shot here.

I mean, it was... About 15%.

Okay, so what was shot... Which scenes were shot here?

It was a very pivotal moment of the movie.

Okay, that's the...

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me... let me...

Let me remember it.

He's... Is he right there or is he right here?

- Where you're sitting. - He's right here.

And he just looks over at Morrie,

and you know he's decided Morrie's going.

And if Morrie's going,

might as well just knock everybody else...

Well, no, Morrie was a problem from the beginning.

I think any reasonable businessman would have...

You know, here's a question that has nothing to do with anything.

You're working for the mob, and you've been having

some disagreements with your business partners.

Why would you ever get in the front passenger seat

when somebody else is sitting in the back?

I mean, Paulie made the same mistake in "The Godfather."

It's always like, you know, "That's a bad seat to sit in."

Yeah.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

It is tempting to think,

when reflecting on Jackson Heights,

of India.

But Queens is always changing, always in flux,

a landing spot for people from all over the world;

new arrivals from Tibet being an example.

♪

Sandwiched between two cell phone stores

and a couple of jewelry shops

is Lhasa Fast Food.

This particular neighborhood we're in now, Jackson Heights,

has historically been the first stop for the newest immigrants.

It's a big Latino neighborhood,

but the South Asian community's presence is pretty well known.

And it's, I think, very fitting

that now this huge Tibetan community, which is very new,

looking for a home; where they gonna go?

They're gonna go near the Indians, right?

So you guys grew up together?

Yeah, we grew up together in Queens.

I remember we were in the same Little League.

What position did you play in Little League?

Oh, they put me in the outfield.

I was terrible.

Which outfield? That matters.

Oh, yeah, usually the right side or...

- Right field? - What do they call it?

Okay, see, I don't know. I don't know.

Heems joins me for dinner

along with his friend and neighborhood advocate,

Ali Najmi.

Right now I'd like to call up

a close friend of mine, Mr. Ali Najmi.

Thank you.

I'm really involved in politics,

local elections, empowering new voters.

Mm-hmm.

And then advocating for particular issues that come up.

Mr. President, I know you're not too good at listening.

But you're gonna have to hear us now.

Muslim Americans are not going anywhere.

Latino Americans are not going anywhere.

And we contribute to this country.

It turns out, we pay more taxes than you do.

Why give a [...]?

I have a sense of what I think is right

and what needs to be done.

And I can't sit back and let people who are being underserved

continue to be underserved.

You're gonna have your work cut out for you

the next four years. We are, but you know what?

Dude, we have to organize.

There's no other way to do it.

America wouldn't be as great as it is right now

if people didn't organize.

It's both unique and disturbing that you're also from Queens.

Because the values that you have been running on

are not the Queens values we know.

And I guarantee you one thing:

we, all of us, will make sure

you don't forget where you came from.

How much traction are you getting within the community?

Is there a hunger for that or is it taking some convincing?

There are definitely a lot of people who are just...

Because it's such a new community,

they're just trying to make it in America.

They're trying to maximize whatever they have,

even space.

"We have a cell phone store, a phone card store.

"We have a little bit of space; let's put a restaurant here

and maximize everything we can."

But then there are other people that get it,

that believe in the promise of America;

they believe in their rights.

♪

ThenThuk: hand-torn noodle soup with chilies and ginger.

♪

I mean, do you think it's only a matter of time

till you're replaced by yet either another incoming group

or, you know,

uh, hipster apocalypse?

Look, I mean, the story of New York

is that the neighborhoods are constantly changing.

And everything's in flux. Nothing is static.

And even all our communities that have come in,

you know, we've transformed these neighborhoods

that we've moved into.

It's hard to make a claim for ownership

when my parents moved here too, you know?

So there is that constant, like,

"I don't want this neighborhood to be gentrified,

but am I gentrifying it?"

Shaptra, or chili fried beef:

thin panes of beef with chili oil

and soy and Sichuan peppercorns.

Sha momo: steamed dumplings stuffed with beef.

♪

For a lot of people, you see this community,

but for them, it's like the nightmare scenario.

What's the best things about Queens other than diversity,

just as an everyday practical matter?

You wake up every day in Queens,

and you're allowed to be who you are.

You can't say that about every place;

maybe not even the places our parents come from.

♪

Further out in Queens, the somewhat forlorn looking

but still beautiful Rockaways.

♪

This is Rockaway Park.

Further down, you'd call it Far Rockaway.

There's also Rockaway Beach.

That's why they call it the Rockaways

and not just Rockaway sometimes.

Right.

There's a lot of different parts of it.

Josmar Trujillo, a writer and local activist.

You from Queens originally?

I was raised in the city,

but I lived in Queens for most of my adult life now.

And Rockaway now?

No, so I left here a little...

About a year after Hurricane Sandy,

'cause the way Sandy hit and the way

it kind of shook people out of the way they were,

and you didn't want to put your family

through that again, the risk of that.

How bad it get hit out here?

This was, like, something out of a movie.

Hurricane Sandy pounded the East Coast in 2012,

and many communities suffered.

But the Rockaways were hit with particular ferocity.

How was the response?

Oh, you know, the response from everyday people was good.

Like, one of the best things about

what happened right afterward

was the way a lot of people came together who lived here,

but also how a lot of people kind of came in,

pitched in, brought food, brought generators.

But, you know, officially, with, like, government,

the semi-governmental groups,

they dropped the ball.

What was the problem, though?

They weren't ready for it.

The Rockaways, by design has never been a place

where there was a lot of good investment

or infrastructure anyway to begin with.

Why? Look.

This is what you would call prime oceanfront property

not far from New York City.

What's going on?

This was a place historically where the city

and Robert Moses in particular

really used as, like, a dumping ground for undesirable groups

that the city didn't necessarily want to deal with.

Back in the day, the Rockaways were

a summer destination for middle-class New Yorkers

until better roads and an improved rail system

lured them to the beaches of Long Island.

They threw a bunch of public housing projects in here.

They sent a lot of the low-income people of the city

out here, and it just wasn't a place

that historically the city ever took seriously.

You know, since then, we've always had

a lot of working-class whites move in,

into more kind of the western end,

and so you've kind of seen in the Rockaways

just kind of shape out along race and class lines.

And the one dynamic that's changed after Sandy

was that a lot more, like, young urban professional types,

like, were really coming out here, you know,

maybe looking intentionally or not

to, like, Brooklynify the Rockaways.

Right.

Or gentrify the Rockaways.

Rockaway's called, like, the Brooklyn Riviera

or the Williamsburg Riviera.

Who gets the shaft in a situation like that?

If you're a person who's not a homeowner;

if you're a person that's struggling to pay rent,

the plans are generally, history has told us,

gonna leave you behind.

It's interesting because I don't think

a lot of people thought that that would happen here.

When you're on Rockaway, you had this kind of sense of security

that you kind of were out in this lazy beach town.

And, like, I would love to come out here and walk on the beach,

and it'd be just me and maybe two other people

for miles and miles, and that was great.

Where you won't have that anymore.

Where there won't be a place in the city

for you to be able to have that.

You know, some people may be for it,

and then I think that might be shortsighted,

'cause I think that this might, uh, not necessarily

involve the same people who are here.

It never does.

♪

What's a perfect day in the Rockaways?

Oh, a perfect day?

Obviously, hit the beach, but you don't want to

find a place where there's, you know, no sand.

You know? Right.

You want to find a place

that's kind of off the beaten path.

Grab a bite to eat.

You maybe, you know, have a couple of drinks at night

and watch the waves crash.

We're near the airport,

so you watch some of the planes fly over.

And it's just, you know, it's a different feel.

You don't feel like you're in New York when you're out here.

♪

When I first came here, I was... I was a city kid.

I was used to living with the hustle and bustle

of the city that never sleeps.

When I got here, there's, like, this tranquility.

There's this feel that you're not in the city,

and it's great, because it makes you feel like

you can sit back and be with your thoughts.

You know, as a city kid, it gave me a lot of perspective.

So anytime you can come out here and kind of be away from stuff

and kind of be, you know, with the water,

with your thoughts, is a great day.

Yeah.

♪

♪

♪

Is that a $100 bill?

Yeah.

I feel dead inside, Laurie.

This is gonna bring me around.

Keep telling yourself that.

Hi.

Uh, all of it on number two to win first.

- All of it? - Yeah.

Thank you.

Gotta be in it to win it, Laurie.

All right.

Can I get $5 on number five to win, please?

It's the middle of winter,

and there are only a few

hardcore racing enthusiasts here;

also me and friend and author Laurie Woolever.

Here they come.

And a winner.

All right, you won your first race.

You know, you didn't win anything, but...

Not quite good enough.

♪

I love this place:

the ponies, the beer,

the looming sense of despair and melancholy.

Did I mention they have Jamaican beef patties?

So people like it here because

you can get your emotional feel for the horses

and you can look down into the paddock,

and people like to sort of see how the horse is behaving.

All right. I smell victory.

Or is that horseshit?

♪

Fourth race, number two to win.

Come on, number two!

Come on!

♪

Oh, no!

Smoked.

♪

I need to win in a long shot now.

I need to get well. I gotta come back.

♪

Built near the site of a former conduit

for the Brooklyn Waterworks that brought water

from eastern Long Island to the Ridgewood Reservoir,

Aqueduct Racetrack opened in 1894.

The glory days of horse racing are long gone,

but for those few proud remaining degenerate gamblers

with a few bucks and a dream, Aqueduct is still there.

It's a judgment-free zone here, though.

Totally.

It's kind of a "come as you are" situation.

I think that's true of Queens in general.

And you can kind of fly under the radar, you know?

You have not been harassed too much today, right?

No, a guy came up to me.

He says, "Hey, you look like Anthony Bourdain."

I said, "I wish I had his money."

And he said, "Yeah, right. That asshole."

It was great.

It was like the perfect encounter.

Yeah. That's Queens.

Nobody gives a shit.

♪

- Oh! - All right.

Two, right up on top.

Yes.

Come on, number two.

Keep it. Keep it.

♪

It's a close race.

Close it up.

It's a nail-biter.

Dropped like a stone.

Way to suck.

So promising.

No braces for my little girl.

It's not over.

There's always another race.

I'm Ray. I'm from Guyana originally.

My father raced birds, so I end up with the same hobby.

It's called bird racing.

Instead of, like, a running race,

it's like a singing race, you know?

The first bird to chirp to 50 won the prize.

♪

It's worth a lot of money.

And if he become a champion,

he win a couple of races, the price goes up.

$10,000, $8,000.

♪

Gotta be as gentle as possible.

♪

So I just hold it in my hand.

If you hit bumps, I rattle him, you know?

I want him to be as calm as possible.

We'll find a parking as close as possible to where we going

so the birds don't be exposed to the cold weather.

♪

Right now we trying to warm up the birds.

And sometimes you bring a bird today,

and he's not in the mood.

Nothing happens.

We just gotta another day.

All right, you ready?

♪

♪

The whole world is in Queens,

and like the world as a whole, it is constantly changing.

♪

Here in the Jamaica neighborhood,

a growing number of immigrants from Africa put down roots,

and with them, restaurants catering to their tastes.

Like here at Africana restaurant.

How your day?

My name is Blessing Osegara.

I come from Nigeria.

And this one a Nigerian restaurant.

We started in 2000.

The first three years were really, really tough.

But thank God were still alive,

we're here and we're [indistinct].

♪

My mother had a restaurant in Nigeria

for 20 years before I came here.

I love to cook.

When you come in here, you feel at home.

It feel like the mother's land, you know.

♪

Mmm!

This food is really good.

It is very good.

And she was worried about it being too spicy.

I don't think it's too spicy. Oh, no.

Never a problem for me.

Sara Khan has made it her mission to find

and write about some of these great little

off-the-grid places throughout the borough.

You're studying the intersection between food and culture.

How did you get to that point?

So I kind of cobbled together

a way to travel, learn languages, and eat.

Do you ever worry that by celebrating

these communities, you are helping to destroy them?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

I worry about it.

But you know, those stories need to be told

through what they do, through how they survive.

♪

♪

Every meal, every dish has a story,

often a very personal one.

Often a story of hardship, separation, difficult times.

But when somebody cooks for you, they are saying something.

They are telling you something about themselves,

where they come from,

who they are,

what makes them happy.

A whole hell of a lot of people in Queens,

the people who make the borough what it is,

who make it such a great place to eat and explore

are very far from the places they once called home.

♪

But Queens is home now.

♪