Food in Flushing

A bright Hong Kong-style cafe that took over the old Sunway space and serves congee, sizzling platters and beef chow fun until four in the morning. The menu runs long and cheap in the way those cafes do, with steamed custard buns and hot and sour soup ordered off the same page as dim sum. Families finish dinner at one end while people who just got off work start at the other.

Daily, 11am to 4am

One of the Italian holdovers from the Flushing that existed before 1970, on a side street off Northern Boulevard north of downtown. Tight quarters, a greasy menu board, juice in plastic dispensers, and a slice that regulars have been eating for decades. The answer to what kind of food is simply pizza.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to midnight. Sun, noon to 10pm

Open every hour of the week on the far eastern end of the Northern Boulevard Korean stretch, serving sundaeguk, the blood sausage soup that Koreans eat to undo a long night. It arrives with salted shrimp and pickled onion to season it yourself. The dining floor is plain and the turnover at three in the morning is the same as at noon.

Open 24 hours, seven days

The newest of Flushing's basement courts, opened in December 2025 under the 99 Ranch Market on Main Street with more than twenty counters across twelve thousand square feet. Robert Sietsema singled out Noodle Time here for a twelve dollar spicy chicken soup of soft wheat noodles, boneless thigh meat and scallions slicked with chile oil and scattered with peanuts. Tables have outlets and free wifi, which tells you who eats here.

Daily, 7:30am to 9:30pm

A Northeastern Chinese barbecue place on 39th Avenue that does not open until four in the afternoon and then runs to two in the morning. You order skewers by the stick off a checklist, lamb and chicken hearts and enoki mushrooms, and they come off a charcoal grill with cumin and chili. The crab is the other half of the name and comes by the pound. It is loud and the beer is cold.

Mon to Fri, 4pm to 2am. Sat and Sun, noon to 2am

One dish, gamjatang, the pork neck bone soup that Koreans eat to undo a long night. It comes plain or with dried cabbage, with pickled napa, in a curry version or with seafood added, and the pot lands in the middle of the table for however many of you there are. You work the meat off the bones with your hands and the bowl of rice on the side is not optional. The dining area is plain and the people at the next table are mostly eating the same thing you are.

Mon to Thu, 10:30am to 11pm. Fri, 10:30am to midnight. Weekend hours not confirmed

Down a flight of stairs from Main Street, opposite the Flushing library, this is where Xi'an Famous Foods started as one stall in 2005 before it became a dozen shops around the city. The basement shut for four years and came back in 2023 with eleven stalls, brighter light and real seating, still trading in one region at a time rather than one menu. Order at whichever counter you like and pay that counter.

Daily, roughly 10am to 9pm, and individual stalls keep their own hours

The house dish is black pork belly grilled at the table and wrapped in lettuce, and it comes with enough banchan to cover the rest of the surface. It took a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2010 and has kept the same large dining floor and the same all-night schedule since. Walk in at three in the morning on a Saturday and the grills are still going.

Open 24 hours Mon through Sat. Sun, 1am to 10pm

A basement shop on 41st Avenue with no English sign, where the cook pulls the noodles where you can watch and nothing on the menu clears twelve dollars. Henan hui mian is the dish, a wide hand-pulled noodle in a long-simmered lamb or beef broth. Bring cash and ask for the English menu.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

Joe Rong steams cheung fun to order from rice he grinds on site, so the sheet comes off the tray soft and still wet rather than cut from a cold tray. The signature has shrimp, egg and dried shrimp rolled in and runs about ten dollars. Order at the window in the Landmark Quest Mall arcade and eat at one of the handful of stools.

Daily, 10am to 8:30pm

One stall of the thirty-odd in the basement food court under New World Mall, with the dough pulled and slapped against the counter in front of you while you wait. The beef noodle soup is the order, clear broth with sliced shank and coriander, and there is a stir-fried version and a rou jia mo sandwich on the board as well. You pay at the stall, take a number and find a seat in the shared hall, which is the part that takes longer than the cooking.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

Another named stall in the New World Mall basement, a few steps from the noodle counter. You take a basin and tongs and load it with whatever you want out of the chilled cases, hand it over to be weighed, and it comes back either as a numbing broth or stir-fried dry with no soup at all. You pick the heat level and the mild is not mild. Paying by weight means a large bowl and a small one cost what they should.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

Opened on Prince Street in 2006 and still the first name anyone in Flushing gives for xiao long bao. Nine kinds come out of the kitchen, the pork and the pork with crab roe being the two to order, and they arrive in a bamboo steamer hot enough to need the spoon. It is walk-in only, no reservations taken, and the turnover is fast enough that a wait on the sidewalk is measured in minutes.

Daily, 8am to 11:30pm. Fri and Sat until 12:30am

A kosher dairy counter on Main Street that has been feeding this part of Kew Gardens Hills since 1970. Slices, falafel, knishes and blintzes, ordered at the register and eaten at one of the tables in the back. It closes early on Friday for Shabbat and reopens late on Saturday night, which is a schedule you have to know rather than guess. Prices are low and the turnover is quick.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri, 11am to 3:30pm. Sat, 7:30pm to midnight

Thirty-odd stalls two blocks west of the 7 terminus, divided up by region so one counter does Shanghai and the next does Beijing. Sietsema wrote it up in March 2025 and picked out stall twelve for pork soup dumplings, lion's mane meatballs and fish-fragrant eggplant, noting how hard it is to spend more than ten dollars. Bring cash, because the counters do not all take cards.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A Korean barbecue house that has been on Union Street since 2000, a five minute walk from Flushing Town Hall. Staff do the grilling at your table rather than leaving you to it, which is the difference between eating and managing a fire. Galbi is the order and the banchan keeps arriving whether you ask or not. The name comes from an old phrase for an idyllic stretch of Korean mountain country, which the place says plainly on its own site.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

A soondubu house on the Korean stretch of Northern Boulevard, past the point where Main Street's crowds thin out. The stew arrives at the table still boiling in a stone bowl, you crack a raw egg into it, and rice comes in a covered pot with black grains mixed through. There is galbi and a seafood pancake if soup is not the point of the evening. The 9am open makes it one of the few places out here that will feed you properly before an afternoon program.

Daily, 9am to 11pm

A narrow takeout counter under the 7 tracks where the thing to say is "number six." That is twelve pork and vegetable wontons in chili oil with pickled mustard green on top, about ten dollars, handed over in a plastic container with a wooden fork. There are four or five seats and most people eat standing or carry it out to a bench.

Daily, 10am to 7pm

A tong sui shop on Prince Street doing the Hong Kong sweet soups, served warm or cold depending on what you order. Ginger milk pudding is the one to get, set by the ginger itself rather than by gelatin, and there is mango pomelo sago and taro mochi paste for anyone who wants something colder. Nothing on the menu is a cake and nothing is built to be photographed. It stays open to eleven every night, which in this neighborhood is where dessert actually happens.

Daily, noon to 11pm