March 16, 2015 By Michael Florio
The owner of a popular Tibetan restaurant in Jackson Heights has opened a second location—this one in Sunnyside.
Tenzing Tsering, who has owned GangJong Restaurant for the past three years, opened Punda Tibetan Restaurant, located at 39-35 47th Ave, this weekend. The restaurant offers modern Tibetan food, along with Asian and Indian cuisine.
Tsering came to the United States in 2011 and soon afterward opened his Jackson Heights restaurant. That establishment is small, with room for 12 customers and a small kitchen.
The Sunnyside location is significantly bigger, with room for about 32 people. Furthermore, it has a big kitchen, which allows Tsering to make more elaborate dishes.
Tsering, who lives in Jackson Heights, was born in Tibet and grew up in India, where he began working as a chef. He had worked in Russia, France, Poland before coming to Queens.
He said he will be operating out of the Sunnyside restaurant full time, as he has trained a chef for his Jackson Heights location.
Tsering said he wants to offer Sunnyside residents healthy food. “I want to make the neighborhood happy and healthy,” he said.
“We will still serve meat, but in limited portions,” he said, adding that he often uses mushrooms and beans in place of meat. “The food is steamed, boiled or stir fried.”
The menu will include Tibetan beef and chicken entrees, such as phing-sha (a slow-cooked Tibetan beef stew with potato, rice and noodles) and jhasha hatsa (which is sliced chicken sautéed with freshly roasted dried chillies).
He is also offering momos, the popular dumplings made with dough and stuffed with chicken, beef or vegetables.
There will be Indian entrees such as beef curry, chicken curry and shrimp curry, as well as several vegetarian options.
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10 Comments
This place has great food and a nice backyard in the summertime. It isn’t a commercial as Queens Blvd but that has it’s pros and it’s cons. They will do fine so long as they start doing take-out. It’s hard to survive as a restaurant in the neighborhood if you don’t. They would also benefit from a liquor license.
Tried it and they have really good quality food. Everything seems freshly made. I hope they get customers. The only issue is the location.
Ah Ferdia, you are right – Still on 47th Ave though!
Krissi, you’re talking about another area. Check the address. The location is horrible.
What the hell are people talking about?
First off, if you include the dumpling places, there are easily at least 5 Tibetan/Nepalese/Bhutanese restaurants in the area. 47th Ave in the upper 40s is totally becoming a “Little Tibet” – not only are there restaurants, but I’d say at least 6 stores over there are owned by Tibetans. If you look at the apartments, a bunch have the Buddhist prayer flags on them! Hell, even the old Spanish grocery/deli on I think its 49th has new Tibetan owners. My nail salon just hired a bunch of Tibetan ladies too.
And “dead”? This part of town isn’t dead at all – it just doesn’t have “normal” hours. The post work crowd is pretty busy. The delicious taco place over there does brisk business too. And yes, rents are (obviously) cheaper than other parts of the neighborhood – this isn’t an area that’s reliant upon the hated upon “yuppies”.
If you haven’t been noticing this demographic trend over the past 5 years I’m going to go ahead and assume that you don’t come to this part of the neighborhood very often.
Unless this expects an overflow from its Jackson Heights location, it is dead in the water. That section of 47th Avenue is dumpy and desolate even in daytime, and parking is always extremely difficult.
If the second Tibetian restaurant is Malingo, then I would say there is no competition there.
Personally, I’m looking forward to this opening and the fact that it’s off the boulevard is a blessing in disguise.
Location’s not great so hopefully his rent is relatively low. The other Tibetan place next to PC Richard is a fair distance away.
2 Tibetan restaurants in one neighborhood. Good luck. Hope he did his market research.
I worked at a high school in LIC and there were eight students from Nepal. (They all had the same name, but that’s apparently not such a big deal for Nepalese people.)