It’s a problem Wang has tried to address this year by opening the gates at 4 p.m., an hour earlier. Insanity is a good word for the market, particularly as evenings wear on, crowds swell, and lines for everything from Trinidadian shark sandwiches (Caribbean Street Eats) to Transylvanian chimney cakes (TwisterCake) grow longer and longer. Moon Man specializes in a coconut pancake at the Queens Night Market on April 13. The last time I looked at the numbers, they were serving 70 to 80 customers an hour, which is insanity!” Strategic advantages “You ride on the shoulders of the vendors and their backbreaking work.

How did he do it? Wang credits his naiveté (“I think it was a blessing I had no event-organizing experience”), his concept (“it’s a testament to what diversity and affordability really mean to people”) and especially his tenants. “I would have bet money that we would fail in the first year and I’d go on to something else.” Instead, Wang has spent most of the last decade growing his market into a foodie paradise that has served more than 3 million patrons, helped launch 400-plus fledgling food businesses and earned media accolades for being one of the city’s top 100 dining destinations (The New York Times) and the nation’s best food festival (USA Today). “It’s not not busy,” admitted Wang, who was dealing with last-minute preparations and a broken tailgate on his truck when I phoned him a few days before the market’s opening day. Sambuxa Sudanese Cuisine owner Gladys Shahtou serves up her dishes at the Queens Night Market on April 13. John Wang, the market’s founder, mandates that vendors charge $5 or $6 for all dishes. Gastronomic dilettantism? Of course, but of the best and most economical sort. Then it was the sweet smell of Venezuelan corn cakes on a griddle (Ay Cachapas!), the esfihas - mounds of spicy ground beef on Brazilian flatbreads (Mister Bocadillos) - and on and on. No sooner had I thrilled to De’Rangoon’s salad than the smell of fried oysters lured us to adjacent MuahChee Alley, whose stated mission is to introduce New Yorkers to food from China’s Fujian province. I left promising to do just that, even as scents both unfamiliar and enticing pulled me in a dozen directions at once. Mister Bocadillos roasts picanha on a spit at the Queens Night Market on April 13. There are more than 2,000 temples and pagodas,” she said.

Wai thrilled when quizzical looks from skeptical patrons melted into expressions of delight, sometimes seizing the moment and stumping for tourism in her homeland of Myanmar, especially the ancient city of Bagan. The dish was already interesting, composed as it was of tomatoes, shredded greens, bits of fried garlic, shrimp powder and an assortment of roasted nuts, but the fermented tea launched the salad into the flavor stratosphere. Her De’Rangoon was just one of more than 70 fledgling food companies - most operating out of 10-by-10 booths topped with blue awning - doing a brisk business on April 13, the first day of the Night Market’s ninth season.

“We order the fresh leaves from our country,” said Hnin Wai, stirring a mixture of fermented green tea leaves and olive oil, the pesto-appearing sauce for which Burmese tea leaf salad is named.

And until your stomach’s traveled there, well, you haven’t really been anywhere. Since 2015, the Queens Night Market has taken 20,000 stomachs on journeys into the unknown almost every Saturday night from April to October, doing so from a parking lot behind the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. De’Rangoon Burmese Flavours owner Hnin Wai prepares the burmese tea leaves salad for travel writer Scott Vogel at the Queens Night Market on April 13.

Day trip in nyc