"I grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, not far from Jackson Heights. It was a very mixed neighborhood, but it did have a lot of South Asian kids. In the '70s, I remember always going to Jackson Heights on Saturday to the temple, to go grocery shopping for all our Indian groceries, and to bring home samosas. When I was older, my mother and I moved back and forth between Queens and Manhattan;"
"Those days, I was still very much a pure vegetarian and I didn't eat a lot of things. If we did go out to eat anything other than Indian food, it would always have to have some rice. Even if there was nothing else, at least I could get rice with some soy sauce and Tabasco or something. As a teen I moved to California and then I came back to New York after I graduated from college in the mid-'90s."
"When I was growing up, Indian food in New York was pretty much Northern Indian or Punjabi food, even if Bangladeshis were cooking it. Even the uptown restaurant off Central Park called Nirvana served the same menu that you saw from every takeout restaurant. When I came back there was Tamarind. Now there's all these second- and third-generation Indians chefs becoming emboldened, cooking their own food, and bringing it to a larger audience."
A person grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, near Jackson Heights, in a mixed neighborhood with many South Asian children. Saturdays were spent in Jackson Heights visiting the temple, shopping for Indian groceries, and bringing home samosas. The family moved between Queens and Manhattan, and Kalustyan's was the only Manhattan source for Indian groceries. The person was a strict vegetarian who relied on rice when eating non-Indian food. As a teenager moved to California, then returned to Manhattan in the mid-1990s and shopped on 28th Street. Indian food in New York was dominated by Northern/Punjabi styles, but restaurants like Tamarind and second- and third-generation Indian chefs later broadened the culinary scene.
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