The market will host around 50 food vendors offering items from a range of nations (Photo by Sharon Medina, Queens Night Market)
Sept. 12, 2022 By Christian Murray
The Queens Night Market returns to Flushing Meadows Corona Park for the fall season this Saturday.
The event, which features food vendors from around the world who sell their native cuisine, will take place every Saturday through Oct. 29 from 5 p.m. to midnight. The season concludes with a Halloween-themed event, complete with trick-or-treating and costume contest.
The market first debuted in 2015 and its founder John Wang says that approximately 2 million visitors have attended, and 350 New York City businesses have participated—representing food from more than 90 counties. He said that this year has been the event’s busiest, with more than 20,000 visitors attending on average every Saturday.
Wang said that the vendors have been breaking sales records. The vendors, however, are subject to a price cap, where they are not permitted to sell food items for more than $5-$6.
“I know the price caps we impose on vendors are challenging for them, especially these days, but that’s also why we haven’t raised vendor fees in two years and why we continue to pass along any and all of our operational saving directly to them,” Wang said. “If it’s not affordable for vendors, it’s certainly not going to be affordable for visitors.”
Nearly 60 food vendors will be selling their food each week this fall.
Some of the new dishes on offer will include Brazilian churrasco, Portuguese bifana, Malaysian roti jala, Thai boiled whelk, Trinidadian curry crab & dumplings, Mexican picaditas, and Ethiopian sega wat.
The fall season will also feature many dishes that have been part of the market for some time, including Hakka meatballs, Belizean panades and garnaches, Sichuan ice jelly, Antiguan ducana and black pudding, Burmese palatas and tea leaf salad, Indonesian kue pancong and tahu pong, Peruvian ceviche and arroz chaufa, Persian crispy rice, Malaysian “ramly” burgers, Portuguese pasteis de nata, Romanian-Hungarian Kürtőskalács, Bengali jhal muri and fushka, Puerto Rican pastelles and rellenos de papa, Asian duck baos, Jamaican jerk chicken, Filipino balut and diniguan, Tibetan momos and tsel bhaleb , Cambodian fish amok, Hong Kongese soy sauce noodles, Colombian Arepas, Trinidadian shark sandwiches, Taiwanese popcorn chicken, Salvadoran pupusas, Japanese ramen, and more.
For a full list of vendors click here.
(Photo: Sharon Medina via Queens Night Market Facebook page)
A food vendor at the Queens Night Market (Photo: Sharon Medina via Queens Night Market Facebook page)
The Queens Night Market is also hosting a pro bono fundraiser for the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Wednesday, Oct. 12 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The event will be a gala that will take place under the Unisphere.
For $50, ticketholders will be offered food, courtesy of several vendors from the Queens Night Market. All proceeds will go to the alliance, which supports public programming and the maintenance of the park. For further ticket details click here.
“The Queens Night Market has called Flushing Meadows Corona Park home since we launched back in 2015,” Wang, an Alliance Board Member said. “It’s been an honor and privilege to help plan, curate and execute the Alliance’s annual fundraiser under the glow of the Unisphere since the tradition began in 2017.”
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3 Comments
Visited in late Aug right before they closed for the US Open. The variety of options was nice but it ended up being pretty expensive, spent about $20 and I still left partially hungry. The $5-6 vendor dish limit feels affordable and lets you try more places, but the portions are mostly tiny for most of the vendors. As example, I paid $6 for 3 small bbq chicken drumlets/wings or $6 for a tiny pork belly bun roughly he same size as the the buns/wrap for traditional Peking duck.
A few years back prior to the $6 price limit it use to be you paid $12-18 for most dishes but it was a full size portion so you could only stomach one or so for the night.
Won’t be going back anytime soon unless its simply for something to do like hanging out with friends who want to visit. You’ll get a better deal just going to a restaurant. Also parking there is a nightmare, so don’t forget the +$15 for the parking lot fee unless you take the train.
@Sunnysider :
another Queens event that is nothing but a rip off . They make these events so unaffordable to everyday people.
Def will not attend .
It was never $12 – $18 for any dishes. It was always capped at $5 – $6. Maybe the portions got smaller after covid because they used to be decent before. That was the whole point, it was supposed to be the opposite of Brooklyn smorgasborg…. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of, were you even in Queens?