Jennifer Valeriano
Caridad Restaurant
100-02 Northern Blvd
Queens, NY 11368
I'm glad they put the music on… it brings me back…
Caridad was a place my family would go to for years growing up. It was the perfect place for a family lunch after Sunday mass. So when you said, “pick a restaurant that means something to you,” this was it.
We would come here almost every Sunday after church. Sometimes we would change it up to go to a diner or a sit-down bakery but mostly, this was it.
We would always sit right there… in that big table in the back… but after my dad passed, we kind of stopped coming all together. I actually haven’t been here in a while.
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This place makes me think of two of the many things I love most in life, my family and New York City. Yeah yeah… I know. “New York is so expensive! Its so crowded! Blah blah blah…”
Personally, I think everything is what you make of it. I have always appreciated this city for a deeper meaning, as I do most things.
So, Caridad being located in a diverse neighborhood like Jackson Heights, Queens really represents the melting pot that is New York City. The staff would always embrace us as much as we embraced them. The women at the restaurant would yell out, “Llegaron los Peruanos” “The Peruvians are here!”
We would walk straight to the back, and they were already setting up our table.
Did they know our names? No.
Did we know theirs? No.
But that didn’t matter. They would smile, we would smile, and it was the perfect Sunday.
It’s a given that Spanish is spoken differently depending on the country you’re from. Caridad, for example, is a Dominican spot, so whenever we would place our food order, there were always continuous “translations” going on. My brother and I would laugh every time because it was always fun to hear our parents get tripped up on what they were trying to communicate to the staff, but actually, the exchanges of different “dialects” weren’t exactly uncommon for us, growing up in Queens and all.
My dad would order sopa de res and the waitress would say “Ah! Sancocho.” I would ask for jugo de maracuyá, which Dominicans call, chinola, then I would say arroz amarillo, which they would call moro. “Close enough!” my dad would say, and we would all laugh it off, excited for the food to come out.
I've since moved out of Queens and had the opportunity to travel extensively. It was during these travels that I realized not everyone experiences the rich diversity found in NYC, or even within the Hispanic/Latin culture, which is a unique world in itself. I guess that's something I had taken for granted.
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I love New York City for exactly that… its diversity.
Growing up in a Catholic school, we began each day with prayer, and I never questioned why some students of different faiths would engage in their own individual prayers. It was simply a common occurrence. If they missed school for holidays I didn’t observe, it was completely normal. The next day, classmates would ask, "Hey, how was your holiday? It's awesome you didn't have to come in yesterday!" This was just a part of our everyday life.
As an adult, I’m grateful for the differences I was exposed to as a child. In fact, I recognize these experiences as a privilege because I had no choice but to absorb everything around me. And you know what? I actually commend others who go out of their way to learn everything I luckily had at my doorsteps.
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When I think about a permanent home-base one day, it’s here. If or when I have children, I want them to experience true diversity, encompassing different races, religions, sexual identities and expressions, disabilities, upbringings, socioeconomic backgrounds, all the things. That was one of the best things my parents did for me, unknowingly so, and something I truly believe this city provided for me.
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So, after sharing these experiences with you, at the end of the day I think it just comes down to warmth, kindness, and tolerance - everything my family and I received at Caridad, every Sunday.
As an aspiring business owner and entrepreneur in the hospitality industry, I believe it's crucial to understand and appreciate the many layers that make up an individual. In the early '90s, my father owned a Peruvian restaurant in Woodside, and he always taught my brother and I that the key to attracting customers, especially on Sundays after mass, was to prioritize and value each person's unique identity—a lesson that continues to resonate with me.
