Jackson Heights Life

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Have you ever been to a Lidl?

This article mentions Lidl's first store in Queens, opening in Astoria in 2021. https://www.connect.media/lidl-to-open-first-queens-location/#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20an%20East,new%20format%20early%20next%20year. Most likely only convenient for JH'ers who have a car, since it's not near transit.

This one talks about how special Lidl is: What is Lidl? Why this discount grocery store is giving Aldi a run for its money

This place is in Fresh Meadows. It sounds like delivery is available but it's also possible there's a wait list to even get to order delivery.



A New Kind of Hot Chicken, from Pecking House

These days, moments of joy seem to arrive mostly by surprise, offering brief relief from the dull feeling that weeks and months are blurring together. The other night, one came via cheap beer. It was Tsingtao, a pale lager, produced by China’s second-largest brewery, with an easy-drinking flavor profile that’s as carefully calibrated and comforting as Coca-Cola’s. I’d never had a Tsingtao at home but have rarely eaten in a Chinese restaurant without ordering one, if not two, especially to pair with anything spicy, its sweet, yeasty, almost creamy roundness cutting obligingly through heat.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until I opened a bag of food dropped off by Eric Huang, the impressively pedigreed Taiwanese-American chef behind a new takeout-and-delivery operation called Pecking House. Two bottles were packed in ice, keeping the beers crisp and cold; my first sip felt like a portal to a former life. It was delicious on its own and a consummate foil for the salty, fiery seasoning on Huang’s singular fried chicken, the centerpiece of what is essentially a meat-and-three meal.

Huang spent time in the kitchens of Café Boulud and Gramercy Tavern before earning the title of sous-chef at Eleven Madison Park; last year, he left, with plans to open a Michelin-star-worthy restaurant of his own. In the early months of the pandemic, he helped his mother, who owns a restaurant on Long Island, as she adapted her business. Once they had established protocols for outdoor dining and to-go orders, he turned to Peking House, his uncle’s restaurant in Queens, which belonged to Huang’s parents in the nineties and is where he spent much of his childhood.

read more:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/a-new-kind-of-hot-chicken-from-pecking-house

There's an article in the Times today about the Astoria Houses (NYCHA) where people are complaining about not having cooking gas for months. There's a quote from a State Senator who says:

“This is a situation that would not be tolerated in a private residential situation,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represents western Queens and introduced a bill demanding that the housing authority discount rents to residents whose utilities have been disrupted. “There’s absolutely no reason it should take months on end to get gas fixed.”

However, I know that my coop building here (would rather not say which one) also took months to fix cooking gas -- and this was because we needed risers to be installed or fixed throughout the whole building and it just took a long time to accomplish. (The Times article also mentions the Astoria Houses needs gas risers replaced.) I have no complaints about what my coop went through as it seemed necessary and necessarily time consuming to fix properly.

I also have a friend in a pricey Greenwich Village coop who went through the same thing, also for months. I know of someone in a Mitchell Lama on the UES whose gas was out for at least 1-2 months. And I just passed along my hot plate to someone in the Northridge or Southridge complex here in JH whose coop is also about to start this process.

So if this issue is so prevalent and it can take months to fix, why is there such a focus about the hardship in this one particular complex? Maybe I'm wrong and it's not as prevalent and it seems? I'm curious how many pre-wars throughout the city have had to go through this recently.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-nycha-gas.html

The location is NY Hall of Science.

I'm not sure what's going on with Fruita Dona, the produce/natural store on 37th and 83rd on the south side of the street. This is not the Downtown Natural Market, but a different store that started off as a produce market and then expanded into some natural items. It's possible they might be closing.

In any case, if you're looking for some packaged products, they have some really good prices right now due to a 30% off clearance sale. I didn't really look at many specific items, but I did buy a Hu chocolate bar for $3.15, and those bars are $5.99 at another nearby place.

This is their second store in Queens. Has anyone been? I think I went to one in Vancouver.


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