Author: ruhlwrite

Giuseppe Falco pulls a chair up to the table and pours himself a cup of coffee. Pachanga Patterson, his Mexican restaurant with a New York accent, doesn’t open until evening, but his day starts at 10 a.m., and he’ll be around until at least 8. So the coffee, black as ink, is a necessity. His parents, immigrants from Sciacca, Italy, always told him that if he worked hard, he could have anything he wanted. He’s proof that they were right: Pachanga is Giuseppe’s second restaurant.…

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I live in what people in the neighborhood call one of the “big houses.” The lot is only 20 by 100, which, by Astoria standards, is an average size. It looks big because it is set back from the street, separated from the sidewalk by a terraced lawn that steps up like a tiered wedding cake. And it has a front porch whose weighty head is held high by a quartet of big, white Colonial columns. I’ve heard it said that these “big houses,” which line Ditmars Boulevard from…

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The carrot-coconut-apple bread, just out of the oven, is cooling on a wire rack as Claudia Lieto-McKenna readies her boys for 9 o’clock mass. She hands a couple of slices to 13-year-old Tristan and eight-year-old Luca while her husband, Nigel, urges them to get a move on. Just as she always does, Claudia’s made a double batch of the sweet-smelling bread that she insists tastes better with butter. What her family doesn’t devour, she’ll hand out to friends and neighbors. She’s…

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There’s a matched pair of elephants on Yogi Lala’s front sign. You can’t miss them because each one is balancing a diamond the size of the Ritz on the end of its upturned trunk. This is not an easy thing for an elephant to do, especially while rearing up on its hind legs. And it’s not an easy thing to keep a business going for 35 years, yet that is exactly what jeweler Larry Lakhati has managed to do. Larry, a distinguished fellow with a white mustache and just enough jewelry,…

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It’s Sunday morning, and the Chabad of Long Island City is at rest. The same cannot be said of the Rabbi Zev Wineberg and his wife, Rivka, who are busy planning for the coming week. Theirs is the only Jewish community center in Western Queens and as its membership has mushroomed, so have their duties. There is a Hebrew school and women’s circle to run; a weekly newsletter to publish; religious holidays to celebrate; regular services to hold; and, of course, the communal Friday night…

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