Our most immediate question about a spring day in Queens is often answered when we wake up, just by looking out the window: How's the weather? Springtime in Queens can be overcast or sunny, drizzly or dry, blustery or breezy, chilly or temperate, often cycling between pleasant and inclement every two or three days. When we identify a day that's too good to waste indoors, it's time to take full advantage.

Seems like old times: Dining out in Queens, whether we're grabbing a quick bite or sitting down for a meal, is nearly as exciting a prospect in late 2023 as it was in the first few months of 2020, before the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, serendipitous encounters with friends are still less likely, and scheduled lunches and dinners are sometimes painstaking to arrange. But when we do get out and about, there are many new restaurants, cafés, bakeries, markets and street vendors to discover, many new dishes to try, many old favorites to revisit. We keep a list (it gets longer all the time), and we imagine you do, too. Here are a few of our recent favorites for you to keep in mind.

In the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods of Queens, empanadas are everywhere. Literally "covered in bread," an empanada at its most elemental is made from dough that is folded over a filling, sealed and then baked or fried. This basic recipe gives rise to innumerable variations. All-purpose wheat flour is a common foundation for empanada dough, but the dough might feature cassava, corn or plantain flour instead. The fillings are generally savory, but sweet fillings are not unusual; guava paste and cheese is one familiar combination. The largest menus we've come across in Queens include several dozen different empanadas.

Each year in late summer, some of the best athletes on the planet converge on Flushing Meadows Corona Park to compete in the United States Open Tennis Championships. In 2024, the U.S. Open begins with practice sessions and qualifier matches on Monday, August 19, and concludes with the men’s singles final, scheduled for Sunday, September 8. The tournament site does provide hungry fans with several cafés and casual bar-restaurants as well as a “food village.” But when in Queens – where some of the best food in the city is so close at hand – why would we confine ourselves to the boundaries of the tennis center? To energize ourselves beforehand or wind down afterward, here are a few of our favorite nearby dining destinations.

Queens Boulevard, a major thoroughfare that cuts through the heart of the borough, accommodates many lanes of automobiles traveling to and from Manhattan. Some eateries that flank it seem geared for auto traffic, too: One stretch of roadway, in Elmhurst, sports a classic diner, an Argentine steakhouse and a fast-food restaurant marked by golden arches. Driving by, or even walking by, we might easily miss a corner business that looks out on those other eateries. From outside, on a sunny day, the storefront seems more like a mirror than a window; modest signage marks the doors. Opening them, we enter Arya Cafe and leave behind the glare of the sun and the honking hustle and bustle of passing cars, trucks and buses for the murmur of conversation, mostly in Tibetan.

Almost before we’d sat down, tea and rice pudding had arrived at our table. “This is the way I was raised,” Sami Zaman explained. We’d arranged a time to speak with him at his namesake Afghan restaurant in Astoria, Sami’s Kabab House, and we’d quickly discovered that refreshments were an essential prelude to our conversation. Sami is always “working, working, working,” he tells us, but during our visit he also had a smile and a greeting for everyone who stepped into his kabab house. Between spoonfuls of pudding, we asked about the roots of his hospitality.

Mount Everest Deli may appear, to many of its customers, interchangeable with its neighbors – Globe Smoke & Convenience, Seneca Deli Corp., or any of the dozens of Ridgewood bodegas that are instantly familiar to any New Yorker. Passersby on Myrtle Avenue dash in for a pack of cigarettes, a tube of off-brand super glue, or a turkey bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll. But inhale deeply while shopping there and you’ll smell masala. Peek behind the deli counter and you’ll see momos – Himalayan dumplings – tumbling onto the griddle. Mount Everest isn’t just a corner store. It’s a distinctive, tradition-bending urban Nepalese restaurant.

On a warm, sunny weekend afternoon in the spring of 2022, we visited a street fair on Myrtle Ave., a major thoroughfare that cuts through Ridgewood, Queens. The roadway was closed to traffic, in favor of street food vendors, for many blocks; the only bus in sight was a 1950s coach, which we boarded to peruse the vintage advertisements and the lounge-like seating at the rear. But despite our appetite, none of the street food vendors tempted us. We continued walking eastward, beyond the street fair and into the adjoining neighborhood of Glendale, until we were drawn toward the sight of a familiar, eternally hungry, cartoon character holding a hamburger.

The eye-catching vintage sign proclaims: “ohn’s Pizzeria.” The letters in “Pizzeria” are in the bold carnivalesque font that decorates many decades-old slice joints in New York. As for “ohn’s,” it’s missing a one-of-a-kind flourishing cursive capital letter. “The J fell off,” says Susan Bagali, while ladling sauce onto a Sicilian pie behind the counter. “I called three companies and none of them could fix it right. I don’t wanna change it at all.” John’s Pizzeria’s unchanged appearance is exactly what first caught our eye while the corner restaurant was shuttered during the entire Covid-19 pandemic – for good, we worried.

Few places in New York are home to such a diverse cross section of the Jewish diaspora as Forest Hills, especially the broad stretch of 108th Street tucked behind the imposing apartment blocks that abut Queens Boulevard. If you stand in front of Carmel Grocery, a plain-looking shop at the heart of the modest business district, you’re likely to hear Hebrew, Bukhori, Russian, Georgian and Yiddish along with the thick Queens accents of the neighborhood’s longtime Ashkenazi Americans. And many of the voices you hear are probably on their way into the grocery, lured by the smell of freshly roasted coffee.

Lately, however, those cravings can be sated closer to home – at Queens Lanka in Jamaica, a specialty grocery that also boasts a small but mighty kitchen and a few seats to accommodate dine-in customers. There’s no room for the weekend buffet that figures prominently in several of Staten Island’s Sri Lankan restaurants, but for curry, kottu roti and banana-leaf-wrapped lamprais, there’s no need to leave the neighborhood. Rasika Wetthasinghe is the chef; Suchira Wijayarathne runs the market. A helper assists with preparation in the kitchen a few days a week, and a number of the kitchen’s bespoke spice blends are prepared elsewhere, but by and large this is a two-man operation.

“Did someone send you?” you might be asked, somewhat jarringly, if you find your way down the basement stairs and past the life-sized goat statue that marks the entrance to the Istria Sport Club. The restaurant, on a nondescript stretch of Astoria Boulevard, doesn’t advertise its presence. Its brick storefront looks more like an office or a private social club, which, at least nominally, it is. But any fears that we had stumbled into the wrong place were soon assuaged. “First time here? I’ll take care of you,” said Zlatko Ranic, who manages the restaurant attached to the 64-year-old soccer club. We soon felt right at home.

For restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, greengrocers, meat markets, and other places that proffer food and drink, the effects of the pandemic that arrived in Queens in early 2020 have abated – if not quite disappeared – as of late 2022. New businesses are appearing with increasing frequency, while others have found occasion to expand. Many older businesses and their longtime customers, after missing one another these past two-plus years, are re-invigorating connections with their communities. In at least one instance, an establishment that we thought was gone for good – a beloved food court – has managed not only to revive itself but to provide a home for a next generation of local small businesses. Here are a few of our recent favorite dining destinations, both old and new.

We're always glad for a second bite at a wonton. At Maxi's Noodle, in Flushing, this Hong Kong delicacy is notably larger than its Chinese forebears. The dumplings and fish balls at Maxi’s are hefty, too, each large enough to require two delicious bites, if not three. The size wouldn't matter, however, if the wontons weren't wonderful – the pale pink of fresh shrimp, combined with a little pork, gleams from within their translucent wrappers. The restaurant's namesake, Maxi Lau, 33, was born in Hong Kong. In 1997, not long before the handover of the territory from the United Kingdom to China, her family emigrated to the United States. They settled on Long Island, in the eastern suburbs of New York City, but the family did most of their shopping in Flushing – home to New York's largest Chinatown – and often ate dinner there, too. It was a "second home," Maxi says.

In Italy, “we would call this a bar,” Caterina Pepe tells us. We're chatting inside Cerasella (pronounced “Chair-ah-Sell-ah”), the small pasticceria e caffetteria she owns with her husband, Luca Schiano, not far from their home in Long Island City. In New York, of course, a bar is typically adults-only, and rarely known for its food. Using that name for Cerasella, Caterina adds, would lead New Yorkers astray – but happily so, once they found themselves in front of the pastry case. Caterina and Luca have adopted the term caffeteria instead, to perfectly describe Cerasella: a meeting place for friends and family, suitable for all ages, that serves coffee, breakfast, snacks and sandwiches. Luca, 35, and Caterina, 28, were both born near the Amalfi Coast, in Naples and Montecorvino Rovella, respectively. In Italy, however, their paths never crossed.