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Hey everyone, it's Dan here with another Sporkful Reheat for you.
Summertime is in full swing, and to me, one thing I think of when I think of summer is just outdoor food markets.
And there are great ones all over America.
This one is all about the Queens Night Market, an open -air market in New York City that is chock full of amazing food from all around the world.
Now, we first put this episode out in 2020 when the market was shut down because of COVID.
But I'm pleased to report that the Queens Night Market is back and going strong in its 10th season.
And the market's $6 price cap on all items is still in effect.
Now, as always, I want to hear from you.
You get an episode of The Sporkful you want us to reheat?
Drop me a line to hello at sporkful .com.
Tell me your name, location, what episode you want to hear, and why.
Thanks so much, and enjoy.
This episode contains explicit language.
The line to get in went through the subway station to the platform into the subway.
They shut down the subway for a bit and then just started skipping the stop.
The highway system shut down, the bus system shut down.
Also, the next afternoon, I had every city agency on my voicemail.
I don't know how they got my number, but they're all like, oh, if this ever happens again, you're shut down.
How dare you ruin our city?
And I also got death threats.
I'd never gotten death threat emails before, but I got several.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
And that voice you just heard is John Wang, founder of New York's Queen's Night Market.
As you can tell by that story about the crowds early on, it was a pretty big hit right away.
Night markets are open -air street markets that kind of feel like a giant block party.
There's often crafts for sale, live music, or some entertainment.
But the main draw is usually the food.
You'll find people cooking up all kinds of dishes and selling them out of their stalls.
falls. John launched the Queen's Night Market in 2015.
The idea of the night market itself came from Taiwan.
And I used to spend six weeks there every summer as a kid and fell in love with night markets.
The feeling is electric.
The city feels like it's all together.
There don't seem to be socioeconomic barriers between folks.
People seem to be happy there, have a good time.
Food's relatively cheap.
For kids, there's lots to do.
It's just so much energy.
Night markets are popular throughout a lot of the world.
John's visited ones in Hong Kong, Marrakesh, and Vietnam.
And the early part of Crazy Rich Asians is a great scene at a night market in Singapore.
And over the past few years, night markets have been popping up in North America, Philadelphia, Pasadena, Vancouver, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.
The one in Queens is held every Saturday night from April through October in a park behind the New York Hall of Science.
Picture rows and rows of stalls, each with a portable canopy over them.
70 or 80 vendors in all, most of whom sell food.
When John first pitched this idea for a night market, locals in Queens were skeptical.
People were really like, you know, what are you doing here?
You don't belong here.
What is a night market?
Even though I don't know what it is, I don't think it belongs here.
You shouldn't put it here.
You're, like, invading our neighborhood and our borough.
So it was tough. I mean, it was tough to convince anyone that it was a good idea.
You've got to understand, Queens is very different from Manhattan.
It's much more residential, fewer high -rises, fewer tourists.
the neighborhoods are there for locals.
But it's also home to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, where they play the U .S. Open, and Citi Field, where the Mets play.
So it's an area that attracts a lot of outsiders who come in for big, pricey events, then leave, often with little benefit for the local economy.
Folks in Queens were worried the night market would be another one of those.
But John did something that makes the Queens night market different from other big events and even other night markets across the country.
There's a price cap.
No item at the market can cost more than $5.
In 2017, John made some exceptions for $6 items, but that's it.
Part of the goal with the price cap is, of course, to make it affordable for everyone.
But John also had another motivation.
It totally changes and influences the type of vendors that apply.
The fact that they are making maybe a $1 or $2 profit margin per dish at the night market.
So the people that decide to try to vend at the Queens Night Market are automatically not profit -maximizing or profit -seeking folks, which changes, I think, a lot of the dynamic in good ways, right?
There's not a feeling of competition at the Queens Night Market, which is not always true at other events.
There's a camaraderie.
The passion for the food is different because I think most of the vendors there are at the Queens Night Market are there to share their stories, share their food.
So unlike a lot of trendy food halls or food festivals where a donut can cost you five bucks, the Queens night market is different.
It doesn't feature the kind of chefs who would have investors worried about getting a return.
A lot of the vendors are locals.
For many of them, this is a side hustle and a way for them to share their food and culture.
After all, Queens is the most diverse county in the whole country.
There are more languages spoken in Queens than anywhere else in the world.
John has a policy that on any given Saturday night, he won't schedule more than two vendors who make the same type of cuisine.
So the Queens night market is a place where, with a $20 bill in your pocket, you can snack on Bolivian beef hearts and Nigerian akara, wash it down with a Malaysian pandan ki limeade, and still have money left for tips.
All that being said, the vendors still want to make money.
So how do they do that?
Volume. In the past few years, on an average Saturday night in the summer, The market has attracted 13 ,000 people.
And when the weather's just right, that number can hit 25 ,000 in a single night.
Gates open at five and it's like fucking ants.
And then when we got there, it was absolutely crazy.
Here are Queens night market vendors, Frances Roman, Radu Sirbu, Jay Jimenez, and Maida Qureshi.
And then the second time I was here, it was a heat wave and I fainted.
Yeah, either sink or swim then.
But then the third week I was there, that was amazing.
Like, I sold out. I loved it.
I said, this is for me.
This is what I'm going to spend.
And then this week, my shoulder got dislocated.
I think everything's a blur.
At the end of the night, I took a breath and was like, holy shit, like, I just did that.
Jay and Jeric Jimenez run the Filipino food stand Grilla in Manila.
Their specialty, balot.
Balut is actually, it's a 14 -day -old duck embryo.
Open it up, and then you start drinking the broth.
And then there's this Filipino stance to it when you eat this.
Once it's all opened up, you lean forward, and then you just go.
I'm so happy to see that people will come to us and say, I was here last week, I tried the balut, and guess who I brought with us?
My friends, all our friends here, we're going to go try it.
Radu Sirbu sells twister cakes at the night market.
I grew up in Romania and learned a lot from my grandmother.
She used to make these chimney cakes, twister cakes.
So the dough is sugar, flour, oil, butter, a little bit of salt, a little bit of vanilla, and then you roll the dough around custom -made wood cylinders, and then we top them with sugar, and then we put it over the charcoal.
Listen, this is from my grandmother.
This is how she was doing it, and the people love that.
tell them a story which is real.
From the time the Queens Night Market opened in 2015, it just kept growing.
They moved to a bigger space.
Coming into 2020, John Wang was thinking big.
2019 had been our busiest year in terms of average attendance.
You know, we were always at vendor capacity.
We couldn't include any more.
It was the year after the year I broke even.
And so like, oh my gosh, you know, there's all sorts of rosy signs.
And, you know, I was excited about it for sure.
And then, you know, March came.
This was supposed to be the Queens night market summer.
Instead, it never opened.
The area around the night market was one of the hardest hit by coronavirus.
Cases are lower now, but even though the market's held outside, it gets so crowded.
John did have designers look at ways to rework the space, but changes would have made it much more restrictive.
Plus, it wouldn't allow for as many people to attend, which would make it hard for vendors to make money.
John says it just wouldn't have the same spirit, so they probably won't open at all this year.
Meanwhile, some of the vendors who also worked at restaurants have faced layoffs.
The ones who own brick -and -mortar stores have lost 80 or 90 percent of their revenue.
A few of the vendors have gotten coronavirus and some have lost people in their families.
Back in February, before COVID, we here on The Sporkful heard that John and his wife Storm Garner were publishing a cookbook called The World Eats Here, amazing food and the inspiring people who make it at New York's Queens Night Market.
So we planned a whole episode on the book and the vendors and the market.
This is that episode, but it's very different from what we originally had in mind.
It's now about some of what's been lost, the jobs and small businesses, and the simple act of coming together around food.
To understand what we've lost, we want to share a vivid reminder of what we had.
So now we turn to the Queen's Night Market vendor oral history project, started by Storm, who's an oral historian.
She recorded interviews last year and has shared some of them with us.
It's a chance to hear the vendors' stories in their own words.
First up, Frances Roman.
She makes traditional Puerto Rican dishes like arroz con pollo, potato croquettes, and pasteles, which are similar to tamales.
Her stand is called Cocotazo.
My logo kind of explains the name.
It's a little kid leaning over a pot with his mother above him kind of knocking him in the head with a wooden spoon.
That's kind of what my mom used to do to us.
Before the food was ready, we'd try to sneak it.
If we got caught, she'd give us a cocotazo.
Yeah, my mom's Puerto Rican.
My mom came here in the 60s, and to kind of support themselves, they sold what I sell today at the market on the street in the 60s.
Yeah, I've been cooking forever.
Spanish homes, you got to learn young.
You definitely start with the sofrito.
The sofrito is the base of everything that we make.
Onions, your peppers, herbs.
Then you, you know, you learn the rice.
And you go to school right after you come home from school, you got to make a pot of rice and you better make it right.
Once you perfect the rice, then you get to use that sofrito that you perfected to then make the beans to go with the rice.
It's all in steps. My grandmother recently passed in March and all of my recipes are my grandma's recipes.
There were no teaspoons, no cups.
They just measured by eye and they hand down these recipes just like that.
And my mom says, my mother didn't leave me life insurance, but she left me recipes worth millions.
So we honor her every Saturday at the night market.
Yeah, so prior to graduating, I came out the closet and my mom didn't take it too well.
She rejected me. She kicked me out at 15.
So I got kicked out at 15 and was kind of just living around.
Despite not having a real home to go to, Frances graduated high school.
She moved down to Florida, did a bit of college, and spent a lot of time cooking.
Then she came back to New York, determined to prove herself to her mother.
I just kind of wanted her to see that whatever idea she had of lesbians is fucking fake.
she started an instagram called food adventures with francis she was just posting pics of what she was cooking for herself at home but everything looked so good people started messaging her saying they wanted to buy her food so when she made dinner for herself she started making extra plates and selling them had one person hit me up going yo your pastelas are so great there's a competition in harlem you should join and i was like i don't really know and then i was just like fuck it let's to do it.
And I did that and everyone was like, yo, you got Bosteles?
And I'm like, yeah.
Next thing you know, I sold 60 dozen.
It took her forever to like acknowledge my partners, but she does.
She acknowledges my wife as my wife.
She was at my wedding.
So just kind of slowly changing that, showing her that two women can in fact raise a normal fucking kid.
Like there's nothing wrong with my daughter.
Like, but my mom just kind of didn't see how any of that worked cuz that was just not her normal.
So she's more accepting now and more willing to to be a part of my life and she's super excited to be a part of this journey.
Took her forever to get here.
It's crazy cuz now we're like fucking BFFs like you come to the market my My mother's there.
Like this same lady's there.
My mom is like, she's a beast. So having her is like having three people.
If we're making the pastel, it's like a four -step process.
So like, well, she's doing two steps, I'm doing two.
We kind of combine.
And that's just kind of how we work.
It's just me and her like in unison, so to speak.
I made the most fucking money in June because the queer population at the night market It was fucking ridiculous.
Every night I had lines of just queer people.
And it's even crazier because they come back looking for my mother, and I'm like, huh?
They love my mom. I had my daughter.
I have her learning the rice and the beans and the meat and steps.
I got all these recipes I got to give somebody.
She's the only one.
that's frances roman her stand at the queen's night market is called coco tazo and her recipes for arroz con pollo and potato croquettes are in the night market cookbook she is currently doing private catering and you can see more of her cooking at her instagram which is at coco tazo catering llc also have a link to her website at sporkful .com coming up we hear from maida On Saturday nights last year, she ran the popular night market stall, The Pakistan.
During the week, she worked at Elmhurst Hospital, just a couple miles away.
This year, Elmhurst became a coronavirus hotspot.
We'll hear Maida's story.
Stick around. round.
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Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman and I have a very big exciting announcement for you.
This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans and some others on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip from my cookbook.
And we had so much fun and ate so, so well.
We ate spaghetti alla sassina in Bari.
We took a cooking class with Silvestro, Silva Story, and Lecce.
We ate with Katie Parla in Rome.
And the folks at Culinary Backstreets who organized the tour, they added some stops that I didn't even know about that were new to me that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating.
Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again.
This November, we just opened up Spots.
It's a small group, so space is limited.
Bottom line, come eat pasta with me in Italy.
For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets .com slash sporkful.
Okay, back to the show.
Today, we're bringing you stories of vendors from the Queen's night market in their own words.
And while the vendors aren't usually trendy, well -financed chefs looking to test a new concept, except some of them do come from culinary backgrounds, like the woman behind a stall called The Pakistan.
Her name is Maida Qureshi.
So the story behind my name is that when I was born, my parents couldn't figure out what to name me.
So I think my dad went around different mosques in Brooklyn where I was born, asking guys, like, what should I name my daughter?
And someone said, what about, you know, Maida from Surah al -Maida.
Surah means chapter, so it's a chapter in the Quran.
So he said it means like feast, like an abundance of food and so my dad was like in love with that name.
So our neighbors were all from Pakistan too.
It was great. Ramadan was amazing because we used to share whatever we made and give it to our neighbors so there was always this floating plate that everyone had like a signature plate like my mom had her signature plate.
Like let's say she made biryani, right?
So she would put biryani on the plate cover it with paper towel and then she'll like, okay, we'll give it to them.
And then that plate would come back with other foods that they had made just to return that plate.
You know, you can't give a plate empty handed back.
I made my first dish when I was five years old, which was briyani.
It was when my mom was in the hospital with carpal tunnel surgery.
And so we had a halal meat store right around the corner and I sent my brother who's four at that time.
So he came back and I made the briyani standing on a chair.
It was like in a big, cause biryani you can't make in a small pot.
It's always big quantities, like three, four cups of rice.
And so my mom was shocked.
She's like, what did you do?
And I said, I made it this is so cool.
But she was, she never said, you know, okay you're not going to cook from now on.
She never said that to me.
So I used to make stuff all the time.
Whatever I used to watch, Bobby Flay, Tyler Horne's, Sarah Moulton, like these are the people.
They not the celebrities that are famous now, but in the olden days.
and I used to just experiment.
In the back of my mind, I always had that, that I always wanted to become a chef, but I never confronted my parents because I was scared.
And they would always say, oh, she's going to become a doctor, she's going to become a teacher.
So because of the expectations they had, I was scared to say what I really want to do until the college application process came.
I looked at Culinary Institute of America and my parents were like, well, why?
why? And then when I got in and I said I wanted to go, that's when they were like pretty mad.
And we didn't speak for like a couple weeks because they were disappointed.
Mayra says the first month at the Culinary Institute was all classroom learning, the basics about different foods, food safety.
Finally, they went into the kitchen and spent She spent three weeks on knife cuts.
Eventually she got an externship at an upscale Mexican restaurant in New York called Sentrico.
She picked up some Spanish and loved learning about other cultures and foods, but Meida realized that the restaurant life wasn't for her.
I kept on like thinking about what I wanted in life.
I started thinking about nutrition and started working at Harlem Children's Zone, which is an NGO in Harlem.
And it's basically helps kids off the street after school.
So that's when I started the cooking program and started teaching them how to cook.
and that really got them engaged, and then I had to do my own research and see what they liked.
So they like to talk about basketball, so then I started watching basketball.
And then when they would come from school be like, oh hey, did you watch the game?
Did you see this? And then that's when they started opening up to me.
They loved the cooking part of it, they wanted to chop stuff, you know, make food, they would go home and make it, and those three years were like amazing.
and while doing that then I was going to college for my masters in nutrition and Public Health and then I started looking for jobs and I applied to Elmer's Hospital in Queens it was like May and it was like Ramadan and I brought food for my coworkers and they were just like oh my god you're such a good cook and I was like yeah I know I am I will miss that life of cooking but I was I was like, I don't know what to do.
One thing led to another, I just started googling how to create a business in an LLC and what that entails.
And then I had a concept, because I wanted to merge my cultural upbringing and what I learned from all these experiences, from different cultures, from school, from the people that I've worked with.
So, the current menu that I have, its mix of, like, French and Mexican mostly, and then the Pakistani flavors.
So, one of the menu items I have is the masala potato croquette.
So, we used to make ham croquettes, I remember, in culinary school.
So, the masala potato's typically filling that you would put in the samosa, and I just stuff them with cheese and corn, and then I roll them in bread crumbs and I fry them.
And then I have something called the beef Nahari tacos.
tacos. So Nahari is a typical like beef stew, and it's cooked with a lot of spices, and it's very rich, like, brothy.
So what I do is, I kind of shred the meat, and put a little bit of sauce, and I put them in tacos.
And then the last one is, you know, just a simple tandoori chicken quesadilla that I serve with a tomatillo salsa.
I'm still learning at my hospital, I want to become like a certified nutrition support dietitian, which means that I specialize in ICU patients.
In terms of my side business, it's more finding out more venues, testing more recipes, adding more stuff to the menu, and then you see where it goes from there.
Since that interview last year, Maida has become a clinical dietitian at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
In March and April, the Elmhurst area became a coronavirus hotspot, and Elmhurst Hospital was inundated with patients.
So we checked back in with Maida a few weeks ago to see how she's doing.
Before we talked about her work at the hospital, we talked about the night market.
Last year was her first year vending there, and she had been offered a spot to return.
She came into 2020 looking for ways to get better.
I knew I needed to up my game on social media.
I was going to do more of it than I did last year, and I was more confident going into 2020.
Like, I had learned my lessons.
I think one of the greatest things was my relationship with other vendors that grew.
Last year, I didn't know many people.
And as the season went on, we built so many close friendships and just connections.
And so those are people that I was going to for tips and advice.
So coronavirus starts in March, and you're working at Elmhurst Hospital as your day job.
what was that time like at the hospital?
I think it was the last week of February, I believe, kind of started hearing rumors, but nothing was definite.
It was just like, oh, there's one patient in the ICU unit.
We're not allowed to go see him.
He might be positive or not.
And then within like a few days, it just hit us like one day after another, the cases increased and things were changing drastically, like so quickly that we were not even prepared.
People just didn't know what to expect.
And so from a nutrition standpoint, as dieticians, we were not allowed to go see patients.
We just had to rely on the doctor's notes, nurses' notes to assess the patients.
Like all the patients here were going to be COVID.
All the empty floors were being converted.
So we increased capacity by 50%.
And it was a learning moment because we're teaching ourselves as we're going because we've never heard of this.
But also scary at the same time because you don't want to recommend something that's not scientifically proven, but you want it to get better as well.
Is there one specific moment from the worst period that sticks out to you as kind of like one of the most difficult or intense things that happened?
We were calling families on the phone because we needed some information, like does a patient have food allergies and things like that.
And it was difficult because they were asking us, like, how's our dad doing?
How's our mom doing?
And there's not much information that we can give because we're not seeing them.
You know, only the doctors are.
It's one thing to have a relative in the hospital and you can go see them.
These people haven't seen their family members in days, sometimes weeks.
And just that feeling is so gut -wrenching.
And then I think the last thing, which was so heartbreaking, was you didn't know that there were sometimes multiple family members that had already passed away.
One scenario, my colleague had called a patient to ask, you know, if his father had any food allergies.
And the wife picked up and she said, oh, my husband passed away last night from COVID.
And my father -in -law's in the hospital.
And she's like, oh, like, you know, at that point, like, what do you say?
Maeda says in the last few months, things have gotten better at Elmhurst Hospital.
And cases across New York have dropped dramatically.
but like with just about everywhere else, things are still far from normal.
I asked Maida what she's been cooking during this time.
Well, we had Ramadan in May.
Normally, we go to friends' and family's houses to open the fast, and this year we didn't do that, so everything was home with my immediate family.
So a lot of fried food, samosas.
There's a gram flour, like a fritter kind of thing called pakoras.
those are also very popular.
In the morning, it's usually paratha with like some sort of curry.
And this is like in the morning, like 4, 3 a .m. You have to kind of like shove that in your mouth.
What's the secret to making a great paratha?
It's a layering of butter in the dough ball.
So you have to kind of make it into a log and then you take like softened butter and you massage it all throughout and then you twirl it in your the palm of your hand yeah and then you mash it together again and then you roll it out so you're creating those layers of butteriness what's your what's your personal favorite paratha my favorite is the aloe paratha which is the one with the potato spiced potatoes in the middle yes yes aloe paratha that's my jam right yeah that's the best one so good because what happens is like it gets crispy in the middle like if there's like holes the potato can like
kind of like sneak out and yeah it crisps up on the the pan that we call the tawa pan and then you get the creamy potato filling you get that contrast right absolutely as for Maida's parents they eventually came around to her passion for cooking her mom has even come and helped work the stand at the night market after you went to culinary school did you did Did you start giving some cooking tips to your mom?
And how did she take those?
No, I did not. We still, we still have our differences.
Like she does not use a cutting board to like slice onions.
She just uses a paring knife and her hands and her onion slices are like on point.
So I leave like the days, like the Pakistani cooking to her and I do like the other, you know, international cuisines to like myself.
What has the Queens Night Market meant to you?
To me, food is not just something that, you know, you satisfy your hunger.
It's so much more. So it's always been a very important part of my life to incorporate other cultures and be respectful of them.
And that's exactly what the Queens Night Market does.
us. And it's just amazing to go from one table to the next, to listen to people's stories, how they eat, you know, what ingredients they use, where they come from.
We had this tradition.
There were a couple of us that we would, at the end of the night, whatever food I had leftover, you know, let's say the ghaji roll and shabby kebab, I would take it to the vendors that I, you know, was close with, and we would just exchange food.
And they would give me, like, the Tibetan momos.
He would give me momos.
And then the dosa people from India, they would give me their dosa and I would give them, you know, the g Arctic roll.
So it was just this exchange of food and, you know, learning from each other, like, hey, what did you put in there?
This is so good. Or, you know, what is this?
And I think that's what food is.
You're learning from each other and it's a way to share stories.
And I think that's the one thing that unites us all.
Yeah, I agree. That was really beautifully said, but it also kind of makes me wince because I feel like it's something that we're already missing right now.
Mm -hmm. Right. That's true.
But someday, that beautiful picture you just painted will happen again someday.
It will. It will. Yeah, things will get better.
And will you be there, Maida, when it happens?
Yeah, of course. I can't wait.
I'm missing food so much. Yeah, I know.
I'm so tired of my own cooking.
Yeah. I'm coming to the Queens Night Market to eat some of those parathas.
It might be next year or the year after.
I don't know when, but it's going to happen.
I'm going to come say hello.
I'll be waiting. Don't worry.
I'll save you a portion.
That's Maida Qureshi.
Her stall at the Queen's Night Market is The Pakistan.
And you can find her recipes for kati rolls and beef chapati kebab in the new cookbook, The World Eats Here, Amazing Food and the Inspiring People Who Make It at New York's Queens Night Market.
It's available now wherever books are sold.
A couple more notes to add.
Last year at the night market, Maida used the money she made vending to support two charities that promote children's education in Pakistan, Zindagi Trust and the Citizens Foundation.
She wasn't able to donate as much this year because the night market wasn't running.
But we have put links to both those charities on our website in case you want to learn more or make a donation.
Finally, special thanks to John Wang and Storm Garner.
If you want to learn more about the Queen's Night Market Vendor Oral History Project, we'll put a link at Sporkful .com.
This episode is produced by me, along with senior producer Emma Morgenstern and producer Andre Sohero.
Our editor is Tracy Samuelson.
The show is mixed by Jared O 'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher, our executive producer, Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Yarden in New York City, reminding you to eat more, eat better and eat more better.
This reheat was produced by Giana Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O 'Hara.
Our engineer is Jared O 'Connell.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app has all your favorite podcasts plus over 200 ad -free music channels curated by genre and era plus live sports coverage.
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And there's interviews with A -list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM .com slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
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