#MonthlyPicks | July 17 by Terri Castillo
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Local residents chime in on their favorite places to eat, learn, walk, and have fun. This month’s picks are by Terri Castillo.
Historic Feats
Walk east along Roosevelt Avenue, under 7 subway line, and make a stop at Kung Fu Tea (82-02 Roosevelt Ave.). Then head to 111 Street and take a right toward Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site of two twentieth century World’s Fairs (1939 and 1964). As the largest park in Queens, it’s a picnic and sports haven, plus it has its own zoo, art museum, botanical garden, science museum, theater, baseball stadium, and tennis facility. The pièce de résistance is the Unisphere, a gigantic stainless steel globe-and-grid representation of the Earth, surrounded by a reflecting pool and jet-water fountains. One hundred and twenty feet in diameter, it was created for the 1964 World’s Fair. Great photo opportunities.
Good Eats
Jackson Heights, my Queens neighborhood, is full of great ethnic restaurants: Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Brazilian. There there’s Mexican, Thai, Tibetan-Nepalese, Indian, and Filipino food. I love the Indian fare at famous Jackson Diner (37-47 74th St.). I recommend my favorite, Chicken Lajwab, which features tender morsels of dark chicken meat cooked with tomatoes, ginger, and cilantro. Another recommendation is Arepa Lady (77-02 77th St.), a friendly, six-table Colombian place made famous by the owner’s popular arepa street cart of many years. The arepas come in different configurations and are served with great-tasting, tender pork, beef, chicken, and sausage, served with different house sauces. I like the grilled, golden-brown, buttery, folded-over arepa filled with tasty beef or pork. Many people have never tried Filipino cuisine, but it’s oh so delicious! At Ihawan (40-06 70th St.), the BBQ meat is perfection. Start with juicy and tender ‘pork belly meal.’ A nice starter is the tasty Palabok (thick noodles with shrimp, eggs, and shrimp sauce), and on weekends, enjoy Lumpiana Sariwa, soft crepes with sautéed assorted vegetables with shrimp in peanut sauce. So-o good, you’ll want to come back again and again!
Wander Streets
After a meal at a Jackson Heights restaurant, I get my friends onto the 7 train toward Manhattan, but we get off at the Vernon/Jackson stop (the last one in Queens). It’s the high-rise and restaurant-filled town of Long Island City. Walk toward the East River and Gantry Plaza State Park with its stunning restored gantries, industrial monuments once used to load and unload rail car floats and barges on the waterfront. Enjoy the two piers, walking paths, sitting benches, wooden chairs, children’s playgrounds, ball fields, courts, and ferry service to and from Manhattan. Take a short walk for a photo op under the famed Pepsi sign, now a NYC landmark. The bonus is to be at the park as the sun sets and see the spectacular skyscrapers across the river as they turn into night-time jewel boxes. So many great photo ops!
Unique Treats
Play ball! Located at 120-01 Roosevelt Ave., Citi Field is home to the New York Mets of the National League. Our Queens team! I saw the Mets beat the San Francisco Giants in early May. It’s thrilling to be inside the stadium at any level and see the lit, vast green field and watch some three hours of live baseball. There are several great foodie places, from Shake Shack hamburgers and milkshakes, to pizza, tacos, and Blue Smoke BBQ and pulled pork. You’re never bored at Citi Field!
Longtime Jackson Heights resident Terri Castillo is originally from Hawaii. She is a book consultant who spent many years as a nonfiction book editor, specializing in memoir, autobiography, biography, first-persons, how-to, motivational, and inspirational. She also manages the legacy of her husband, jazz master Thomas Chapin, who died at age 40 in 1998. The 2016 documentary Night Bird Song: The Incandescent Life of Thomas Chapin is available. (See more at www.thomaschapinfilm.com.) Terri also informs that “Queens No Ka Oi” means “Queens is #1” in Hawaiian. Say it with a big smile, she advises.
Terri enjoys giving her friends a tour of Queens. This time they made a stop at Gantry Plaza