Eating Like Queens - Book Review

Eating Like Queens is a "foodie" bible for Queens, New York, detailing the cuisines of over 20 cultures with history, recipes, and mouthwatering descriptions that will send you on a beeline to the nearest place cooking up kebabs, samsas, arepas, or dim sum. Though it does include short reviews, Eating Like Queens is not a Queens restaurant guide. Rather, it's a guide to eating well at ethnic restaurants, whether in Queens or anywhere recent immigrants have added to the American melting pot.

What's jook? Pho? Khao tom? Mie goreng? Avena? Yaniqueques? Ackee with saltfish? If you guessed breakfast, then you've sneaked a peek at Eating Like Queens or you're already a real foodie seeking out the novel in ethnic restaurants across New York.

Author Suzanne Parker, a food reporter and award-winning cook, has focused her search on Queens, the most ethnically diverse area in the most ethnically diverse city in the world. Over a hundred languages are spoken in Queens, and more important, the same tongues can taste an amazing array of dishes. Parker gives the background on this phenomenon and how you can enjoy it most through history, recipes, and a bit of gastronomic anthropology. Her enthusiasm and knowledge could light a fire even under a finicky eater and get you out there trying new foods and cooking them at home.

There are chapters on the cuisines -- and Queens highlights -- of Afghanistan, Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, China (Sichuan, Cantonese, Beijing, Taiwanese, Shanghai, and more), Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. It concludes with a smattering of Queens restaurants and markets for relatively more well-known cuisines like Italian, Japanese, and Greek.

Eating Like Queens would make a tremendous gift for a "foodie" or anyone obsessed by Chowhound.com. Get one for yourself too -- your stomach will thank your brain for reading this book.