The Queens International Night Market is back again. May 5th marks the opening day of the event and did not require the participants to pay admission fees to enter the event. People from different states, such as Pennsylvania, are swarming to Corona Park, located in Flushing Meadows, Queens, to participate in this year’s event. The Night Market will be open to the public every weekend from now to October 27th.
The site is filled with vendors from the different continents that are selling foods ranging from jerk chicken to takoyaki.
The event started back in 2015, with 25 vendors, in the parking lot by the New York Hall of Science. With every successful year, the event has been gaining more popularity and visitors.
“I have been anticipating this event for a year now,” said Brain Roth, 46, engineer from Pennsylvania. Last year, Roth stumbled upon the event, when he and his family came to visit the New York Hall of Science. “I am happy to able to bring my family back and enjoy the different cultural foods,” said Roth.
According to John Wilfred, 42, a security guard for the event, the Queens International Night Market is a place for individuals to “come out and have a good time;” there are varieties of great food and live entertainment.
The founder of the event, John Wang, 36, claims his goal is to “try to have as many countries represented in our vendors as possible.”
Wang states that he can easily fill the place with more vendors. He shares that in the past, during the second week of the 2015 Queen International Night Market, he had 40 vendors at the event.
However, from that experience he realized having many vendors and participants is not a good idea. The overcapacity forces the security guards to prevent latecomers from entering the event. In addition, Wang will receive phone calls from every New York agency asking him how he is going to address the issue of overcapacity.
Wang’s solution is to set up two sneak peek events, prior to the official opening day to the public. The sneak peek is geared towards estimating how many people will come and their reactions to the current vendors.
Although Wang is often stressed from coordinating this event, he is really proud to look around and see that “New York City is here,” due to the diverse backgrounds and income levels that the participants come from.
The vendors at the Night Market are aware of Wang’s passion to showcase the different countries’ cuisines and culture. Weslie Khoo, 29, a food scientist PhD student and a vendor at the event, said, in the beginning, he only planned to sell and promote his creation, pasta made from crickets. However, Khoo was only permitted to be a vendor, after he agreed to sell roasted crickets along with his creation at the event.
According to Khoo, “insect eating is a part of the southeastern Asian culture,” especially in Thailand and Vietnam. While in the Western culture, insect eating is highly disapproved upon. Khoo hopes to get more people to accept insect eating because insect provides a lot of beneficial proteins.
Even though it will be hard to get other cultures to accept insect eating, Khoo knows that the Queens International Night Market is a good place to start. He observes that people that come to the event are open to trying new things and so far no one said “ew, its disgusting” or “I hate it.”
The Queens International Night Market is “a good environment for people to try out different food and culture,” said Khoo.
