Markets 
It’s a melting pot of eats.
Since its founding in 2015, the Queens Night Market has evolved into one of the most acclaimed, varied and affordable food festivals in the world.
This year, a virtual U.N. of new vendors is cooking up an array of tantalizing grub, including succulent Egyptian lamb chops, moist banana bread via the breezy island of St Lucia and hearty noodle and meat Beshbermarak from Kazakhstan.
“Each year it gets harder and harder to find new cuisines,” gregarious founder John Wang told The Post of the festival, which kicks off in its longtime home of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park this Saturday for its 11th run, operating weekly from 4 p.m. to midnight.
Wang, who ditched corporate America years ago to turn his foodie dream into an annual bacchanal, prides himself on featuring otherwise underrepresented countries that make up the metropolitan palette of the Market’s 76 food vendors.
“The genesis of it is that it started as a project that could improve New York City,” Wang said of the fest, which operates weekly until October 31, with a late-season break from August 23 to September 13 for the US Open.
Wang’s overall mission with the Night Market is to keep prices low and highlight mom and pop vendors who may not have deep pockets, as vendor fees are free thanks to big-name sponsors like Citizens Bank. “Everybody’s buzzword is affordability, but we are an oasis of it here,” he explained.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to start a profitable festival,” Wang said, stubbornly setting a price cap at the fest’s inception of $6 for any single item sold at the festival.
“That hasn’t changed, while everything around us is changing. The price gap is getting harder and harder for obvious reasons. But the business model has always been how much I can save on business operations, pass that onto the vendors, who then pass that onto the visitors,” he explained.
To keep his low-cost promise, Wang hustles for cash during the off-season from corporate sponsorships and philanthropists.
Along the way, he’s rebuffed efforts to expand outside of NYC, noting it’s an event uniquely made for the Big Apple. “We will never veer from aspiring to represent New York City and all of the residents here,” Wang said.
The Post received early access to some of the vendors that will be at this year’s food fest — and all we can say is: get your palettes ready. Here are some standout bites that will be offered at the 11th annual Night Market.
Peruvian Bites Delicious: Picarones
For anyone who’s been to Peru, Picarones reigns supreme as the country’s star snack.
“It’s one of the best desserts you can try in Peru,” Raul Vergel, owner of Peruvian Bites Delicious, alongside his wife Flora and daughter Yadhyra, who fry up the crispy and sweet traditional donuts, told the Post. “It goes deep within our roots.”
Made with a combination of squash and sweet potato, the dough is fried to a golden brown and topped with a choice of their homemade molasses-based chancaca syrup, chocolate or strawberry sauces.
Hailing from Astoria, Peruvian Bites Delicious was founded last year with a mission to bring the food of their culture to America.
“When we started, people were telling us to create something new,” Yadhyra told the Post. “But instead we perfected the proper way to make picarones from our relatives, sourced the ingredients and now we can share it with everybody.”
Aside from doling out the delicious treats, Raul says the sweetest part is working with his family. “What can I tell you? It’s about getting closer as a family and it’s a wonderful experience to be bonding with my daughter.”
Soronko Kitchen and Bakery: Meat Pies
Easy as (meat) pie.
When Samanta Onuorah and her partner Issac moved from West Africa to New York, they wanted to launch a food venture that honored their roots in Ghana and Nigeria.
“I have a culinary background, and when I came to the States, I was really struggling to find food that tasted like home,” Onuorah told the Post.
So in 2022, they launched Soronko Kitchen and Bakery, borrowing a tribal word that means exceptional.
Their standout is their meat pies, which reign as one of the most popular foods in the region.
“You find them at parties, on the street, or in the local markets,” said Onuorah of the handheld snack, which was initially inspired by English cuisine.
Soronko makes three variations: one filled with succulent chicken, another with juicy ground beef and a third veggie variation.
They season ‘em with garlic, onions and sage. The crust, meanwhile, is a labor of love.
“It’s essentially a shortcrust pastry made with a rich dough,” she said. “Put them together, and you have a very flavorful, flaky and buttery handpie.”
Tastes of the Silk Road: Beshbarmak
It’s not often you happen upon an eatery that specializes in the food of Kazakhstan (country in Central Asia) — so Raushan Niza, the purveyor behind Tastes of the Silk Road, wanted to change that.
“I recently moved to the US and my family is getting used to the food here,” Niza told The Post.
“Every weekend, my son would ask me to make Beshmarak. Now I’m going to make it every weekend. Dream come true for him!”
From the words besh, meaning ‘pie’ and ‘marak’, meaning fingers, her signature dish heartily layers steamy beef, lamb, onions, noodles, all piled high.
True to its name, it’s designed to be eaten with your hands. “Back home, you’d start eating it when you’re born,” said Niza, who said she’s proud to share her eats with the Night Market. “In Kazakhstan, it’s at every family gathering.”
Mamala: Mini Knish Nosh
A tasty landmark of the Lower East Side, knishes are now front and center at the Night Market thanks to Mamala’s.
Founded by Dani Finkel, her booth was inspired by dinners with her grandparents. “I felt like I was running from my past, but when I got to a certain age, I started to think about my Jewish family table,” she told The Post.
“My grandmother was always cooking. I wanted to start a food business as an ode to them.”
Aside from whipping up flavorful kugel (the noodle pudding made with sour cream), Finkel handcrafts authentic knishes, the potato-filled comfort food.
“It’s an ode to Yona Schimmel’s,” she said of the 1910-circa eatery on Houston Street known for the warm snack.
Finkel’s variation is topped with gribenes (fried onion and chicken skin), alongside a dollop of spicy mustard and served with a shooter of pickled turnip for good measure.
“I love cooking and I love food,” said Finkel, whose main gig is that of a digital strategist.
“I wanted to do something to make me super happy. The internet is not a nice place to be right now, and feeding people is the last thing we can do as humans to interact in that lovely way, no matter where you are from.”
Bevo’s Kitchen: Banana bread pudding
Growing up on the sunny shores of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Gracia Clery-Leonce first learned to cook thanks to her father.
But when she moved to the states to work as a laboratory scientist, she began to notice “So many different illnesses because of what people eat, so I decided to start a business that sells healthy foods,” Clery-Leonce told the Post.
As a result, Bevo’s Kitchen specializes in plant-based spins on the colorful and tasty food of the island.
Much of it is made with bananas, which are plentiful on the island. “St Lucia in general is very healthy,” she said. “We don’t do typical fast food.”
Alongside a filling banana salad and a lip-smacking juice made with the yellow fruit, Bevo’s specializes in yummy hunks of banana bread pudding.
Each slice is topped with a cherry, a nod to her colorful culture.
Read the full article here
