Why This Neighborhood Has Become a Restaurant Incubator (2024)

The narrative of New York restaurants has traditionally been that the “there” in “if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere” really means Manhattan. Or the cooler parts of Brooklyn. Certainly not Queens. After years of trend pieces and defenses and, yes, gentrification, it is still not the borough tastemakers want to live in. I know this firsthand, having lived in Astoria for 15 years and still having friends in Brooklyn complaining it’s so faaaaaar when I’m on three trains to Bed-Stuy on the regular. And then they’ll turn around and rave about a place that started here.

Look around the city and the country, and you’ll see Astoria’s influence. Restaurants that began in the Western Queens neighborhood are expanding. Rizzo’s Pizza and Mom’s began in Astoria before opening a Manhattan location, and Comfortland will be opening a Manhattan location and serving food at Citi Field. Botte Bar begat locations on the Upper East Side, Brooklyn, and Tribeca. Ruta Oaxaca now has spots in Brooklyn and on Long Island. Compton’s just added locations in Greenpoint and New Jersey. And the team behind Sami’s Kebab House and Little Flower Cafe recently opened the hyped Blue Hour in Bushwick.

Devlin Claro/Blue Hour

The trend is wider than the tri-state area. There are also bigger success stories: Bareburger, which opened its first location in Astoria in 2009, now operates 33 locations across the Northeast and Ohio. Chip City Cookies, which launched in 2017, has 40 locations nationwide. And the King of Falafel, a Palestinian restaurant that began as a cart in Astoria in 2002, just announced it’s opening a location in Chicago, with plans to open more both there and in Dallas. Astoria is increasingly a culinary incubator.

That these restaurants started in Astoria is a matter of familiarity: The owners just happened to live there. It is also, crucially, cheaper than much of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Bareburger

“I rented an apartment in Astoria back when you could afford to rent something; my first apartment was, like, under $1,000 a month,” says Peter Phillips, co-founder of Chip City. So when he and high school friend Theodore Gailas were brainstorming a business they could go into together, they were attuned to the neighborhood in which they spent all their time.

After opening their first shop in 2017, they weren’t looking to expand, but the size and the fully electric operation made Chip City easy to scale. Phillips also recently opened the popular Somedays bakery in Astoria, and he tells Eater he’s looking to expand into more locations around the city by next year.

Luke Fortney/Eater NY

Bareburger co-founder Euripides Pelekanos, who grew up in Astoria, said he was initially looking at locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn since “what we were doing back then was just not being done in Queens, or even much in Manhattan.” But the financial crisis of 2008 had just hit, and one of his partners suggested sticking to Astoria, where they knew the market and the neighbors. They were pleasantly surprised to find that crowds flocked to upscale burgers with non-standard meats, even in financially precarious times.

Pelekanos says Astoria has the conditions of a great restaurant market because of its relative affordability, proximity to Manhattan, and “because this neighborhood has historically been a migrant landing spot.” According to city data, Astoria is 37 percent foreign-born, with historically large Greek and Italian populations, Steinway Street’s Little Egypt, and large populations from Bangladesh, Colombia, the Balkans, and more. Because no one population dominates, no one cuisine dominates —which drives a sense of excitement and pride around the options.

Walk down Broadway or 30th Avenue, and you’ll see old and new Greek tavernas, casual Croatian spots, arepas, halal Thai food, tasting menus, clubby bars, and inventive Korean bagel shops. Let’s face it: They’d likely get more hype if they were in a cooler part of town.

“Fifteen years ago, I was living in Brooklyn, and I moved to Astoria on a whim,” says Alex Compton, founder of Compton’s. “One of my buddies had an extra room, and he was like, the food over here is insane; there are so many good restaurants.” In 2023, Astoria residents spent $486.8 million on restaurants, according to NYC’s Small Business Services, second only to groceries. Compare that to a neighborhood like Bed-Stuy, which spent $196 million. Per Compton, there are “enough eaters” that people are ready to take a chance on new operations. When he had the opportunity to take over a cafe space on 14th Street with a sandwich shop, he realized rent was low and demand was high.

But Compton also notes the other aspect of Astoria’s demographic makeup that makes it attractive to restaurateurs: upward mobility. “Astoria has been trending up for the last 15, 20 years,” he says. City data shows 44 percent of Astoria residents are rent-burdened, lower than the 50 percent city average, and that the neighborhood’s median household income is $82,971, compared to $70,663 citywide, according to city data.

Crucially, people moving to Astoria can afford to eat out, which creates a cushion from which restaurateurs can afford to expand. “I hate to use the word gentrify; that word has such a bad connotation,” says Pelekanos, but that’s what’s happening. And as a result, “there also is a lot of money pressure on this neighborhood because the rents have gotten wacky.”

Rental inventory has gone up, and the median asking rent in the neighborhood is $2,900, up 5.5 percent from 2023 — and up from a median of $1,357 in 2009. Commercial rents have also risen, with merchants accusing predatory landlords of unfairly jacking up prices. At a rally last summer supporting City Council establishing commercial rent stabilization, Astoria nail salon owner Tsering Sherpa said her grocery store neighbor had to close because it couldn’t afford the raised rent. “I am afraid my landlord can increase the rent for my nail salon knowing that a Starbucks or a pharmacy will move in and pay the rent if I can’t.”

Chip City

Phillips also notes that rather than exporting Astoria-born restaurants, the neighborhood is beginning to attract national brands. Chains like Krispy Kreme, Buffalo Wild Wings, and 7th Street Burger are opening, which landlords likely see as reliable clients willing to pay top dollar.

Pelekanos worries both rising rents and chains will sour the conditions that made Astoria such a welcoming market for new restaurants. “How many restaurants can you have in one area?” he asks. “It’s not like you can have twice as many restaurants as you had 15 years ago.”

So far, though, Astoria has yet to draw the key demographic of chefs with names outside the neighborhood: Restaurants like Sailor with April Bloomfield and Ilis with Mads Refslund are still choosing Brooklyn. That may soon change, but for now, Astoria chefs and restaurateurs can define the scene for themselves.

”It’s hard to be a successful restaurant in New York, let alone a place that has 10 restaurants on every block,” says Compton. “If we can do it in Astoria, we can probably do it anywhere.”