Eating Like Zohran Mamdani for a Week

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor-elect, has talked a lot about food during his campaign. I spent this past week eating at all of his favorite restaurants. I started at Kabab King, a 24-hour restaurant in Jackson Heights that’s sort of at the center of the Zohran restaurant-verse It’s a place that he ate as a teenager, and famously, where he filmed his Mr. Cardamom rap video. A couple of us shared a big plate of goat biryani. It’s a little bit spicy, and full of peppers and carrots. I thought the portion of meat was pretty generous for $15. Afterwards, I walked across the street from some paan, which is what Mamdani had suggested in one of his interviews. This is my first time having paan, which is tobacco and other aromatics wrapped up neatly in a betel leaf that you chew on, and whatever flavors or tastes are in your mouth before are completely gone. So next I went to Little Flower Cafe, which is just one of my favorite coffee shops in the city. The firni donuts are really special and usually sell out. They have crumbled pistachio on top and are shaped like little U.F.O.s. The breakfast burrito is really, really great too. If I didn’t live two subways away, it’s something I’d eat every week. Last, I went to Pye Boat Noodle, a Thai restaurant in Astoria where Mamdani occasionally orders takeout. He orders the goi neur, which is this incredibly spicy raw beef salad. It comes cold, almost frozen in places, and looks a lot like beef tartare. It’s so unique, and honestly was one of my favorite dishes I’ve had this year.