By Anna Gustafson
When Long Island City resident Leah McLaughlin moved to Queens 3 1/2 years ago, she was amazed by the diversity of restaurants — not to mention the population — and decided her new home borough was the city experience for which many search.
“It really just opened up a whole new world to me,” McLaughlin said of the borough. “Queens is the New York that people move here thinking Manhattan will be. It’s so diverse.”
She began to explore the borough for food, going to the Golden Shopping Mall in Flushing, Spicy Mina in Woodside and Egyptian food joints in Astoria. Though the options seemed endless, when McLaughlin tried to search for publications solely focused on the borough’s cuisine, she came up empty-handed.
“I looked around Queens, and I didn’t see anyone doing this and thought how bizarre this borough that’s so food-oriented doesn’t have this voice,” she said.
So, taking matters into her own hands, McLaughlin decided to leave a longtime career in publishing and begin her own magazine devoted to covering food in Queens. She now owns Edible Queens, a free quarterly publication that launched in September and just published its second issue this winter.
“So many people have been coming out of the woodwork to tell us do this or go here, and that’s great for the magazine,” McLaughlin said. “There’s a huge amount of borough pride, but not many people had paid attention to us. Now we have a cool, hip, authoritative place to congregate and talk about where to eat.”
Thanks to her former life in the Manhattan publishing world, McLaughlin knows a thing or two about how to create a brand and she is doing much more than focusing only on creating the magazine — though that is a full-time job in and of itself. She recently asked Rego Park resident Joe DiStefano to head Edible Queens’ blog, World’s Fare, which has been noticed by foodies like Woodside resident Jeff Orlick.
Orlick is the founder of the Jackson Heights Food Group, an organization that meets monthly to try different restaurants in western Queens.
DiStefano, who had lived in Woodside before moving to Rego Park, has written about food in Queens for the past six years for various publications, including a column for the Serious Eats blog.
“It’s a big job, but I think it’s high time we have something like this,” DiStefano said of Edible Queens.
The Rego Park resident has covered a variety of places on his blog, most recently Bosna Express in Ridgewood — a restaurant that specializes in Balkan cooking and which DiStefano frequents for the pljekavica, or Bosna burger. The meal is a 10-ounce patty of beef and lamb which is grilled and served on Bosnian-style pita bread.
He said he is constantly roaming around the borough to try different cuisines and writes about everything from Peruvian spots in Rego Park to sampling dumplings in Jackson Heights.
McLaughlin is hoping to increase her print publication from 25,000 to 40,000 this summer and attract attention with an upcoming fund-raiser for Hour Children, a local food pantry. Edible Queens will be hosting the event Jan. 24 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Lhaus in Long Island City.
“What we’re trying to do is put a spotlight on Queens businesses and Queens foodies that have been here all along but for some reason or another got overlooked,” McLaughlin said. “I’m trying to say here’s this little old Italian lady in Astoria who has cooked her butt off for 50 years and has the best sauce you’ll ever try in your whole life. It’s stories like that I’m trying to tell.”
Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 174.
