Homecoming: Elmhurst Food Crawl for a Cause (Tour Recap)
Elmhurst Food Crawl Highlights - Foodie-Friendly Event to Raise Funds & Awareness about Food Insecurity in Queens
I cannot think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than eating your way through Elmhurst, Queens! Unless, of course, if you’re also able to support the fight against food insecurity at the same time! In June I joined over 100 foodie New Yorkers on an Elmhurst Restaurant Crawl. Organized by Homecoming, a local community-led organization, the crawl highlighted 5 restaurants all owned and operated by entrepreneurs from Asian American & Pacific Islander communities.
Continue reading for recommendations on 5 must-try restaurants in Elmhurst!
Homecoming’s Elmhurst Food Crawl was more than just a gastronomic journey through Asian cuisine. It was also a fundraiser for New Life CDC, a organization supporting the Elmhurst (& Corona) neighborhoods since the 1980s.
About Homecoming & the Crawl
The Elmhurst Food Crawl was Homecoming’s first ever, inaugural event! And, it was delicious! Tickets were $60, including a $15 donation to New Life. The crawl included 5 stops and enough food for you and your 3 best friends! Conveniently organized along Broadway, Elmhurst’s main commercial street, the vibrant energy, bustle and diversity of the neighborhood was tangible. Accompanying the crawl was an audio guide featuring personal interviews with the restaurant owners. The guide also provides context for the importance of addressing local need in the community. Pre-COVID, over half of Elmhurst’s residents experience food insecurity (according to the Columbia Population Research Center via Homecoming) and is home to the second most restaurant workers in NYC. Today the situation is even worse.
According to Homecoming:
"We connect the work to fight food insecurity and support restaurant recovery in Elmhurst by organizing a restaurant crawl featuring the restaurants that represent the spirit, culture, and vibrancy of the neighborhood. After a long winter, we’re bringing diners “back home” to the flavors that built the community."
Let's Eat! - Stop #1 Indo Java
The Crawl started at Indo Java, a Indonesian grocery carrying a variety of pre-made and packaged goods. As we approached Indo Java, a table filled with neatly stacked take-out boxes signaled that we were in the right place! We soon learned those little boxes held deep fried, veggie-stuffed tofu, a strong start to our eating adventure.
Dewi, the owner of Indo Java, also prepared Cendol for us crawlers to try. A cool drink was the perfect way to start an afternoon of eating! Chilled coconut cream and pandan-flavored jellies sweetened with palm sugar.
Our arrival at Indo Java not only marked my first experience eating Indonesian food, but also my first walking tour as a parent. Despite the sudden onslaught of NYC summer, my wife & I rolled up with our 5 month old son, an NYC foodie in the making! I didn’t realize at the start of the crawl how lucky we were to have a stroller with a giant basket at the bottom!
Homecoming sold tickets in hourly groupings to control for traffic and allow participants to enjoy freshly cooked meals at each stop. We arrived 20 minutes after our start time, so instead of traveling with the group we followed the self-guided audio tour. Each participant also received a cute “Homecoming Passport” with a smiley stamp at each restaurant!
Stop 2: Taiwanese Gourmet
Indonesia and Taiwan are over 1,500 miles apart. But, in Elmhurst your taste buds can make the journey in just 4 blocks! The second stop on the crawl was Taiwanese Gourmet. In business for over 25 years, this restaurant is a long-time favorite of the Homecoming team. We tried a full-size portion of Pork Chop over Rice (排骨飯). The meat was flavorful with a breaded coating and pleasant sweetness. Pacing myself on the walk meant that I kept the crawl going until this morning when I finished my pork chop for breakfast!
We made a slight detour before heading to the next stop: a visit to the New York Indonesian Food Bazaar! Once month St. James Episcopal Church is converted to a pop-up market filled with Indonesian cuisine, including desserts! Knowing we still had 3 stops left on the crawl we didn’t try any dishes. But, we’ll definitely be back!
Stop 3: Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House
Welcome to the wonders of Northern Chinese cuisine! At Lao Bei Fang we tried a small order of their pork & leek fried dumplings. The filling was flavorful and encased in a thick outer skin. Best enjoyed with hot chili oil on top! This was probably my least favorite stop on the crawl, but you should definitely make a visit to Lao Bei Fang for their hand-pulled noodles!
Not to mention that their condiment stand is a vision of beauty!
Lao Bei Fang has fully re-opened their indoor dining space, and there are also a few covered and one uncovered table outside.
I highly recommend their Lao Bei Fang’s Vegetable Hot & Spicy Soup. Filled with more vegetables that I could count, this soup will leave you feeling satisfyingly full while also clearing out your sinuses! Veggies on top, hand pulled noodles below with spicy, chili oil broth all around. The epitome of deliciousness.
Gesso App Audio Tour & Instagram Content
The Homecoming team really nailed the pre-crawl content creation. Partnering with Gesso App and other local creators, they recorded short interviews with each of the 5 business owners. The food was delicious, but a highlight of the experience was watching clips of the small business owners share their inspiration and stories behind each of the restaurants featured on the crawl. Appreciating the food scene in NYC is about so much more than unique and diverse flavors. Each dish and every recipe are a product of memories, identities and life experiences that come together to fuel creativity and form the culinary landscape of the city.
You can still access many of the interview clips for free!
Read Henna Wang's interview with Homecoming co-founder Bryan Lozano to learn more about how crawl's audio app was developed!
Stop 4: Coco Malaysian
Wow. Just wow. It’s been a week, and I am still drooling from the Roti Canai at Coco Malaysian! By this point in the crawl I was already pretty full, but once I tasted the Roti Canai I couldn’t stop eating it! Roti Canai is warm flatbread paired with a curry for dipping. At Coco Malaysian the roti was the perfect texture – slightly crispy outside, but still soft enough to roll in half and scoop up a mouthful of warm, creamy curry. The curry had a nice sweetness and included potatoes and chicken.
Roti Canai is a popular example of Malaysian Indian cuisine. Take a look at Coco Malaysian’s menu, and you’ll see the Chinese name of this dish is: “印度麵包”. (印度面包）or literally Indian bread.
Coco Malaysian has been around for 19 years, and the founders immigrated to the US from Malaysia. Fun Fact: The restaurant is named after the owner’s daughter, Coco!
Last Stop: Eim Khao Mun Kai
The stop last brought us to Eim Khao Mun Kai – a restaurant that hones in on one signature dish: Hainanese Chicken Rice, Thai-style! Owner, Bobby, describes himself as ‘a Chinese blood in Thailand’, and his culinary style matches his heritage. Khao mun kai (or khao man kai), as the dish is called in Thailand, was a salty boiled chicken over ginger rice. At first glance this meal looks a bit bland, but add the two sauces that came on the side, and you’ve got a delicious, flavorful meal! We actually ate so much food on the crawl, my wife & I took our khao mun kai home and re-heated it with bok choy.
Hainanese Chicken Rice is a dish that highlights the history of migration patterns of communities within Asia. Individuals of Chinese descent are one of the largest immigrant communities in Thailand, including families who came from China’s Hainan province.
Overall Homecoming Food Crawl Experience
I highly recommend joining a future Homecoming food crawl! Now more than ever is the perfect time to support small business owners, especially those run by members of the AAPI community.
- The tour supported a important cause and highlighted a neighborhood not often included in NYC tours.
- Tickets sold out pretty quickly. Don't wait too long to buy them!
- The audio guide app and pre-tour content were very informative and brought the food crawl stops to life.
- The dishese were delicious, and it was a lot of food!
- The Crawl was very easily accessibly from public transit.
- It was confusing whether the tour was self-guided or meant to be experienced in a group. I would ask the organizers explicitely before the next tour.
- The Homecoming team added thoughtful touches to the experience, including the Food Crawl Passport.
That sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday, and a fabulous way to eat at places that you might otherwise have overlooked plus help people in food poverty.
The deep fried tofu sounds interesting – it’s often a bit of a bland ingredient.
The tofu actually had lots of flavor! Plus it was stuffed with seasoned veggies. Yum!
When I visited NYC last time, I missed exploring Queens. Would like to explore this borough. Food crawling is a legit way to explore any place 🙂
Yes! You definitely need to explore Queens when you make it back to NYC. Let me know, and I can give you tips for visiting!
This is such a beautiful idea.
I may be biased, but I think this food crawl would have been even better with southern Chinese food options :oP
Hahaha – Kez, I love it! Nothing wrong with adding a sixth stop for southern Chinese. 🙂 Any southern Chinese dishes you would recommend I try?
Wow, I am blown away by how diverse the food was. Many years ago I did a food tour through an European town and, since the portions were tiny and a lot of walking was involved, I was still hungry afterwards. Looking at your photos, I guess that you were not hungry afterwards. Correct?
Rudy – this was definitely an opposite experience where was a lot of eating and not that much walking! We had leftovers for the next day!
There are so many great little spots in New York to eat but weeding out the good from the bad can be hard. So this is a great way to showcase the good places to go to.
I love the idea of a food crawl rather than a food tour, and it is an awesome way of fundraising. I agree with you….Roti is the best thing ever! Once I start eating it, I can never stop it’s soooo good!
This is such a wonderful concept and it’s great that you are introducing it here – especially since Queens is totally underrated, anyway. This food crawl is a wonderful win-win-win-win…for everyone involved 😉
That sounds like so much fun and meaningful. I would have loved to be there. I would have terribly missed a Filipino food outlet though!
Carol – Yes! Add a sixth stop for Filipino cuisine! There are definitely lots of local Filipino bakeries and restaurants. Yum!!!