Long Island City has become a destination for dan dan noodles, durian mochi, and more.
Photo-Illustration: Hugo Yu/When Spencer Chang set out to try all the bubble teas in Long Island City in March 2021, documenting his journey on
, he found 13 shops in the neighborhood serving it. Now there are more than 20. Chang’s current favorite comes fromthat makes its pearls in-house, but his top choice could change at any time given the variety and the speed at which the stores are multiplying. That’s not to say the market is saturated: “I don’t feel like there are too many,” Chang clarifies. “There are enough people here to support them.
Between 2010 and 2020, Long Island City’s population increased by 40 percent, five times the city’s overall rate of growth. In addition to that, the latest Census data shows that 36 percent of Queens Community District 2 — which includes Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside — is Asian, compared with 9 percent citywide. And while there is no official data to quantify the trend, young Chinese expats seem to be especially attracted to the neighborhood.
If the ease of getting to and from midtown has historically been the area’s draw, there is now a growing number of reasons for residents — many of them young and affluent — to stick around. Dozens of new businesses have opened in the past year and a half, most of them smaller, homegrown operations, often on the ground floors of the new condos and glass-walled office towers.a neon-lit shop just south of Court Square, co-owner Fanny Hsu wanted to create a hangout for local families.
Mengnan Zhang, who moved to the neighborhood in 2018, waits up to two hours for cumin lamb skewers to be delivered from her favorite Uyghur restaurant in Flushing — “We order in the afternoon so we can eat it for dinner; otherwise, it would arrivetoo late,” she says — but the lack of options nearby inspired her to start her own business.
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