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Whether by necessity or for fun, lots of people have started cooking and selling out of their home kitchens this past year. Here are 9 to try in Queens.

The Rise of the Home-Based Kitchen in Queens

Every other day I seem to learn about another new home-based kitchen or chef in Queens—someone with or without professional cooking experience making something delicious for sale out of their apartment. Some of these home cooks are more organized than others, with a set menu, active social media presence, a physical food stand and/or delivery options. Others are more word-of-mouth: an email address and an undisclosed pickup location.

Certainly home-based chefs and kitchens existed, particularly in the immigrant communities of Queens, well before the Covid-19 pandemic. But this past year’s restaurant closings and skyrocketing unemployment rates have contributed to a surge of home-based kitchens, and I for one am here for it. Not to detract from our wonderful brick-and-mortar restaurants or established street vendors, but in a perfect world of the curious and the hungry, there’s room for everybody. And new variety on the dining scene only makes our existing diversity more exciting.

Here are some of the home-based kitchens we’ve been following closely in Queens.

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  Chocolate Pie

  Philippines
  lovette40
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  Samosa

  India
  jerald07
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  Beans with Beignets

  Cameroon
  guineapig
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  Cassava fufu

  Cameroon
  guineapig

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Food Memories:   Write a Story Learn More

• Childhood Memories of Samosas

  Bangalore Karnataka

  jerald07

  Rising up on my toes at the age of three to catch a glimpse of what was causing such happy commotion at the dinner table is my earliest memory of the samosa. Being an only child in the group, I w…    Read more

• Discovering My Favorite Cameroonian Dish

  Douala, Cameroon

  guineapig

  Eru is my favorite street food. It is a spinach dish cooked in palm oil with pieces of cow skin inside. I fell in love with it the first time that I ate it in Douala. We were having a lunch in ch…    Read more

• What to Eat in Killarney, Ireland

  Ireland

  owla

  You’ve arrived in Killarney and you want locally sourced quality food. Here's where to go: Yew Tree: For chef John O’Leary, local ingredients are de rigeur – house cured s…    Read more

• Paneer Pakora

  India

  janvi10

  Paneer Pakora is a vegetarian dish that is made for parties, functions and weddings. The ingredients are simple: cottage cheese cubes, chickpea powder, salt, pepper, mango powder. The pakoras are…    Read more

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