A good friend of mine is an active volunteer for the organization Upwardly Global, and for the second year in a row, he’s organized the Silk Road of Queens food tour to raise money for this charity. The tour consists of 5-6 restaurant stops, where the group is able to sample the vast variety of cuisines and dishes that make up the borough of Queens. I loved the concept when he came up with it, particularly because I’ve always felt since I moved to Queens from Boston in 2008 that it was a highly underrated area to live and visit. Queens is probably one of the most diverse neighborhoods on the planet with the number of languages spoken, number of immigrants, and of course, its huge variety of restaurants, which frankly cannot be replicated probably anywhere else in the world. Manhattan can’t hold a candle to the sheer diversity of food that Queens is lucky enough to have.

This was my second year participating in the tour, and this time, I took Chris with me. We had some very interesting conversations with some of the other people who came on the tour, and we tried a number of restaurants that I’d definitely want to go back to, especially Fu Run, which is Northeast Chinese food (strongly influenced by the western Chinese provinces), and Stix, which is Uzbeki cuisine. We had everything from veal liver kebab at Stix to yak dumplings at a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant to candied sticky taro and spiced cumin lamb chops at Fu Run. It was almost a struggle to keep up with all the food, but now I have an even longer list of restaurants I can’t wait to go back to. It’s really true what they say about living in New York. You could probably live here for something ridiculous like ten years and eat every single meal out — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — and still never eat at every single restaurant that existed here. This city is absolutely amazing. There’s always something new and different to eat.