I thought I explored all of nyc...until now | Visiting Astoria With a Local

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hello how's it going it's alan and welcome back to my channel today i am super excited because i'm bringing you guys another episode of beyond your block where essentially travel the world without leaving new york city made up of its famed five boroughs the new york city is extraordinary diverse by nearly every measure it has the largest foreign population of any metropolis it's home to more than 800 languages and has no ethnic majority and like anywhere the city is defined by its residents above all else it's out of my deep-seated love for this town that i'm teaming up with locals from all over new york city to share with you their unique experience from the angle of the neighborhoods they call home while places like midtown and soho and washington square park aren't going anywhere there are countless neighborhoods that you're less likely to find in your tour guide book that are vastly underappreciated i'm excited to welcome those guides to my channel to share with you the new york they'd like you to know i was born in paris and as a small child i was constantly traveling to different countries and being exposed to various cultures and people my mom is iranian american whose family had to flee when she was a child because of the iranian revolution they immigrated to the us with several suitcases and worked incredibly hard to build a life from scratch while i've been very privileged to be white passing and to hold an american passport i feel that my mixed heritage has shaped the way i see the world i know from personal experience that there's so much richness to experience when exposed to cultures different than your own so i am so excited to be able to bring a little bit of that to you all so as i was thinking about where i want to do this next episode i got to thinking about astoria and the greek population that it's known for there and i posted about my instagram story and yani reached out and offered to be our local guide so today we're heading to astoria and of course before we head on over i want to talk about a little bit of the local history so astoria queens is a greek diaspora found here in new york city and it's the second largest in the world in the 19th century there's many german and irish immigrants who settled in this area and then it was after world war ii that a new wave of immigrants from greece came to the area and really established themselves in astoria so by the mid 90s greeks actually started account for almost half the population in astoria it's since become incredibly diverse and nowadays the greek population is not the largest on astoria anymore but it is still the most spoken language there today you can walk the streets and hear people speaking italian chinese korean hindu spanish and more who've really diversified this neighborhood there's even an area known as little egypt with a significant air population there but today we're really going to be focusing on the greek community you'll find a story of thanks to our guy yanni meet yanni he's a first generation greek american living in astoria whose family has been in the neighborhood since the 80s he's a local to the area as well as the greek food scene where he's worked in different restaurants he's offered to show me around and he also has a food-based youtube channel where he's always cooking and trying out new recipes so i knew he'd have a really unique insight into the local cuisine there as well as the culture of course so on that note let's head on over to astoria and go meet yanny what's your favorite how about that what are you most excited about i'm excited for the fish the like bronziness it's like a white mild sweet fish yeah it's actually super common in new york so i have a american friend so like why would you order that like in greece is really hard to come by okay tomorrow hello this is literally fried cheese if you're like sitting in a cafe in greece you're like a little less of a production here yeah yeah i mean it's so good though all right you take the lead and i'm gonna follow suit how it should be so this is salata salad it literally means village salad tomatoes cucumber onions olives and like a black feta yeah olive oil salt pepper just it's so incredibly refreshing yeah exactly these are fried red mullets you just like eat the fish you eat the bones and everything a little crunchy a little extra crunch it's never a never bad thing oh that's nice hello i'm here with yani and we're eating some incredible greek food this is our first stop so we are at taverna clavis we are on dip mars boulevard this was like this used to be the hub of greek food okay and like restaurants agree culture it shifted a little bit but this amazing spot has kind of stayed here it was already like clearly dug in as you can see and it's incredible i'd love to hear a little bit about you tell me who you are the connection to astoria i grew up on long island and queens going back and forth to long island and astoria when my dad first immigrated to the states he came and lived in astoria ran his business here i visit him here and my exposure to the neighborhood was visiting him and now i've like moved here and like finding my own spots in the neighborhood is your mother in greek as well both in greece you're a hundred percent frequently as far as i know i haven't taken twenty three like from a certain part of greece so my mom is from an island called ikaria there is a myth of icarus and daedalus icarus supposedly he had wax wings he flew too close to the sun in the mountain were he plunged in the sea the island next to that is where my mother's from and then my dad is like from casper it's like in central greece up in the mountains yeah both like very small villages and what do you love about australia that you can walk down the street and hear people speaking you go to the bodegas and you see greek newspapers on the stands it's like it's a sense of home and comfort yeah and like share cultural understanding yeah that's such a special thing especially able to find a place in your city something so much like home and your culture it's like it's so incredible in ways astoria feels more like home than i will say other parts of new york or even greece i'm a first generation friend my parents came here i grew up here so my experience growing up has been a blend of every culture american culture the second auction yeah and so a story i'm like is that yeah that's good i want to hear more about your love of cooking your platforms really yeah it's something that i always loved and never had formal training and now my channel on youtube is a way for me to discover and like work through different recipes and cuisines it is my training yeah it's where i make mistakes and learn and show other people are you close with your grandparents as well yeah so my grandparents they would travel a lot between the states and the uh priests watch us um six months there six months here oh that's so sweet and they lived with us when they came here oh so you have like a club that's really cool very close because like in my case my grandpa's iranian and he would travel all the way from iran to california and maybe come for like a month or two at a time you know like you know bring over the iranian food and the sweets and all that with that culture and whatnot it kind of gave us that taste so it's cool it's a similar experience what do you stay with you guys yeah so even with that like there's that immersion oh my gosh yeah absolutely after our delicious wonderful huge meal meal so much happening we're going to head over to titan market hopefully we get to taste like different things kind of explore like the foods there you're welcome thank you thank you semolina custard it's maybe like a semolina custard filling it's like flaky filo pastry it's like a little bit of cinnamon powdered sugar again thank you we appreciate it all right we are at our second stop where are we at we are at titan greek marquez not titan as i thought we're gonna find some specialty greek foods here a lot of the stuff that you're not gonna find in the international section in a grocery store perfect let's go shop three pounds yeah all right got our stuff what do we have here's the bounty like three pounds of feta gala mata olives and filo pastry just a little personal grocery shopping yeah just for me while we're here so many types of olives olive oil bread looks like we got some good stuff okay we are at our third stop we stopped at the greek cultural center so the greek cultural center is a really amazing space that makes work it features work from greek artists films performances theater productions so when you think about what culture is for me it's all based around language that is how you transfer ideas from one person to another yes it keeps it alive yeah so cap the greek cultural center their mission statement is the furtherment of the greek language so they have this really cool program it's a puppet show it's called the cardigosi and it brings in people from like all different backgrounds it's so cute it's like center for kids it's such a fun thing if you ever want to bring your kids to i went when i was young i need to go so we are here at ocean fish market when i moved to the neighborhood i asked my dad like what is the absolute number one spot you have to go to for good food and he was like ocean fish market i've been coming here since the 90s the freshest fish in queens love it should we check it out let's go i don't need any fish but maybe let's let's window shop i'm in soccer for french love yes and get like a pound and a half of that i just saunter on over to the salmon get um a piece of skin on okay so i can sear it okay if i'm feeling fancy like yeah a tuna steak you know okay yes i mean everything here is good they seem like they have everything all imported from greece oh wow so super fresh it comes straight from mediterranean amazing oh my god a lot of the fish yeah it's important all right we're at a final spot to get a little sweet treat get a little pastry from ammonia and just a little bit of coffee in our systems yes i need all right let's go check it out yeah absolutely that's right wait remind me what we have yes we got our frappe so flappers we just got some delightful frappes and a ton of treats and i am so happy this is all i can ask for when i think of going out and spending time in astoria this has been such a landmark the neighborhood my parents when they would hang out with one another they were dating they would come to ammonia have coffees have drinks like it's such a cultural center and how long has this been around since the 70s amazing yeah it's like there's nothing like that when my aunt came to the states she worked here as a server a cousin of mine worked as a server the reason why it's so big and you stayed around for so long is because it is the first thing of its kind this brought like the cafe lifestyle like that culture yeah to new york in the states it's like this sitting outside with a coffee and a cigarette like yelling across the table like this was the first of its kind during that year yeah 70s is crazy it's been around that long i originally come here for yes the sweets cheers all right we're at astoria park right now it's our last stop of the day for a little golden hour moment it's a gorgeous park you got beautiful new york city skyline here views for days sprawling lawns and the sun hitting your back i'm seeing skate parks basketball courts there's a lot to do here it's just humongous it's big this is the spot to like have an outdoor barbecue yeah it seems like there's a lot of museums in a store is there like an art scene or like what are some of those popular museums yes queens has a pretty big art scene it does not get enough credit for it okay there's the naguchi museum on the ps1 and there's a lot of a lot of art galleries if you're gonna come out and see the museums i know a lot of people know about them stay a little longer stay for dinner you know get some greek food like what i love about astoria is that it is greeks don't make up the largest percent of the population and yet it is known for its greek culture this has always been a place that people go to to find their communities to be with like-minded people to just like come and like join the party honestly like open arms you're always longer huge thank you to yani for showing us around the best local tour guide thank you for having me it's been a delight and he has a really incredible food content where can they find you you can find me at flambecooking on youtube or yani kitchen on instagram so check them out thanks so much for watching until next time