Queens Night Market (via Instagram)
Sept. 12, 2019 By Allie Griffin
The Queens Night Market returns to Flushing Meadows Corona Park Saturday for the first night of its fall season.
The event will continue every Saturday from 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. through Oct. 26, when the season concludes with a Halloween-themed festival, offering visitors a chance at trick-or-treating and participation in a costume contest. The market is held at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
The family-friendly market is celebrated for its diverse selection of cuisines for affordable prices, live musical performances and unique art and merchandise vendors.
New fall vendors include Low-Country boil and shrimp and grits, Japanese kushikatsu, Bengali samosas and chotpoti, Thai kanom pung and kari pap, Pakistani chapli kebab and aloo vada;, Polish pierogis and kopytka, Chinese cotton candy art, Balkan bureks and baklava, Argentine choripan, Indian dosas, Tibetan momos, Cambodian fish amok and chek cheng, Salvadoran pupusas and tamales, and Antiguan seafood soup and ducuna.
Since its 2015 debut, the Queens Night Market has represented 90 countries through its vendors and its food and has helped launch more than 300 new businesses in New York CIty, according to its organizers.
This year has been the event’s busiest yet, with an average of 13,000 visitors coming each night and has now welcomed more than a million since it began four years ago.
“We’re now entering the home stretch of our fifth season,” John Wang, founder of the Queens Night Market, said. “It’s been an incredible year – we crossed the one million visitors mark this summer and we’ve continued to diversify the countries whose cuisines we’ve featured.”
This Saturday’s market features live performances by DJ Lil Buddy, Rogue the Magician, Band of Brothers and Brass Queens.
All food available for purchase at the market costs just $6 or less.
“Despite the tremendous pressure it puts on the business model, we’ve maintained the $5 and $6 price caps on all the food available for purchase,” Wang said. “We’re borderline obsessed with being the most affordable and diverse community event in NYC.”
For more information, including a list of all vendors and market map, visit http://queensnightmarket.com/.
