UN of food: Colombian and Uruguayan food in Queens

My culinary adventures in New York City continued in Queens. My Brooklyn-based host Mike was keen for a Queens outing so I met up with him after work and we caught the F train out to Jackson Heights.

I had originally intended to go to Queens earlier in the day so I could visit some of the museums in Astoria recommended in this Matador post. Fortunately I checked online before setting out because it turns out they are all closed on Tuesdays! I ended up spending a bit longer in Staten Island than planned and then chilling out at home in Brooklyn and taking a shower before heading out again.

Jackson Heights is real melting pot New York City, with significant South Indian and Latin American populations. The World Cup was still in full swing while I was there and I saw a lot of flags on the streets – I don’t know if they are there all the time or were associated with the football.

My friend Kachina had recommended this culinary walking tour of Jackson Heights on About.com, so we used this as our inspiration. We started off with a cholado from Aqui Colombia (81-08 37th Ave), as recommended, though in hindsight we wished we had saved this for dessert.

Colombian food – Cholado

As pictured above, a cholado is what happens when you cross a smoothie with a fruit salad. It apparently comes from the Colombian city of Cali and is also called raspao. It was fascinating to watch the guy make it – there are layers of crushed ice and sweetened condensed milk topped with fruit salad and coconut and a glacé cherry. It was actually pretty good and not overly sweet. It was quite large but a lot of that was crushed ice and it helped cool us down. The drink came with a plastic lid, spoon and straw but I removed this for the photograph. After we had finished our sweet treats wandered around for a while before finding somewhere for dinner.

Uruguayan food – Steak

We decided we liked the look of El Chivito D’Oro(84-02 37th Ave), a Uruguayan restaurant. It also happened to be recommended in the About.com walking tour, but we chose it for the menu and the fact it was well lit and seemed to be popular with other customers. Mike has been to Argentina and he says the food is very similar  – in other words, steak, steak and more steak.

It was a friendly atmosphere inside. At the next table over, they were having a birthday party for a one-year-old. By now it was 9 o’clock at night but the one-year-old was awake and having a grand old time – chalk one up for cultural differences! The restaurant was quite open and the lighting wasn’t great anyway so I didn’t take photos once we were inside the restaurant. (I very rarely take photos of food inside restaurants – I like food photography but I don’t want to intrude on other diners’ eating experience).

I ended up ordering steak – no surprises there – and it was almost the size of my dinner plate! It was very tender and delicious, especially with the garlicky green sauce on the table. Mike had ordered beef ribs, which were a bit tougher but very tasty. In a heroic effort, Mike actually finished most of his dish. I could only eat half of mine so we took the rest home in a box and hopefully it got eaten later in the week!

Originally we had planned to get Indian sweets for dessert but neither of us could manage another thing.

The United Nations of food

I am on a quest to eat food from every member nation of the United Nations. So far, I’ve written posts about eight countries and there’s 182 to go.