Walking Through Jackson Heights at Lunchtime

Seventy-Four Languages, One Subway Stop

I got off the 7 train at 74th Street-Broadway on a Saturday in November, and before I reached the bottom of the station stairs, I could already smell cumin and cardamom and something frying in mustard oil. Jackson Heights hits you that way - sensorially, immediately, without introduction. This is the most linguistically diverse neighborhood on Earth, and it communicates primarily through food.

I turned left onto 74th Street and walked south toward Roosevelt Avenue, passing sari shops with windows full of silk in colors that do not exist in nature but absolutely should. The sidewalk was crowded - families, couples, old men in kurta pajamas moving at the pace of people who have nowhere to be and would not hurry if they did. I slipped into Samudra, a vegetarian South Indian restaurant the size of a subway car, and ordered a masala dosa that arrived draped over the plate like a golden scroll. The sambar was thin and tangy, the coconut chutney cool, and the dosa itself shattered at the touch of a fork. Seven dollars. I could have wept.

Roosevelt Avenue is the neighborhood's main artery, and under the elevated 7 train tracks, it has the atmosphere of a covered market - vendors sell fresh sugar cane juice from carts, Ecuadorian bakeries display tres leches cakes in refrigerated cases, and a man at a folding table offers cell phone repairs and, apparently, notary services. The diversity here is not theoretical or aspirational. It is physical. Within two blocks, I passed a Tibetan momo shop, a Colombian arepa stand, a Nepali grocery, and a Filipino bakery selling ube pandesal that was purple as a bruise and sweet as forgiveness.

I walked north on 37th Avenue, into the residential heart of Jackson Heights, where the garden apartments built in the 1920s form quiet courtyards hidden from the street. These brick buildings, with their shared green spaces and Tudor details, were among the first planned cooperative housing developments in the country. You can stand in one of those courtyards - azaleas blooming, children on bicycles, someone grilling on a balcony above - and forget that Roosevelt Avenue's magnificent chaos is half a block away.

I ended the afternoon at Lhasa Fast Food on 37th Avenue, a tiny Tibetan spot where the beef momos were hand-pleated with the precision of origami and the hot sauce arrived in a squeeze bottle that had seen better days but delivered something volcanic and magnificent. The woman behind the counter nodded when I said they were the best momos I had ever eaten. She did not seem surprised.

Jackson Heights does not explain itself. It does not provide context or translation or gentle onboarding. It simply exists, in seventy-four languages, at full volume, and it trusts you to keep up. I barely did. I am still trying.