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The 8 best ethnic neighborhoods in New York City
New York isn't known as a melting pot for nothing.
It's one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, boasting dozens of under the radar ethnic enclaves that go far beyond a basic Chinatown.
From Brooklyn's Little Odessa to Queens' Little Guyana, here are our favorite ethnic neighborhoods in NYC.
Little Guyana, Richmond Hill, Queens
You might not be able to place Guyana on a map, but it's taken over Richmond Hill. The small country on South America's Caribbean coast, east of Venezuela, has a population that's a colorful mix of South Asian (mostly from east India) and Afro-Caribbean.
New York is home to around 140,000 Guyanese, making them the fifth-largest group of immigrants in the city.
Liberty Avenue is Little Guyana's nucleus, featuring saris and spices, roti and rum, as well as businesses like the Little Guyana Bake Shop and The Hibiscus Restaurant & Bar.
Koreatown, West 32nd Street, Manhattan
K-Town, a highly concentrated strip along Manhattan's West 32nd street, between Broadway and 5th Avenue, is a slice of Seoul in the city, and officially known as "Korea Way."
It features dozens of Korean restaurants, karaoke clubs, and even 24 hour spas, most of them stacked on top of each other thanks to the narrow borders of the area.
New York is home to over 140,000 Korean residents — the second largest Korean population in the US — and while they may not all live in Koreatown (many live in Flushing, Queens, another Korean hotspot), they do frequent it enthusiastically, giving the area a super local and authentic vibe.
While there's always a debate as to where the food is better, Flushing or Manhattan, K-Town is steadily gaining a stellar foodie rep.
Little India, Jackson Heights, Queens
Jackson Heights is incredibly diverse, and it can make you feel like you've been transported to a different country with every block.
However, India (and Bangladesh and Pakistan) has staked its claim on 74th Street between Roosevelt and 37th Avenue, where women will shop for jewelry and rich fabrics while wearing colorful saris, and stores are full of Bollywood films and incense.
Like an open air market, the air is thick with the smell of curries and spices, and the streets are lined with sweet shops, curry houses, and eateries selling fresh curry leaves and chutneys.
Little Odessa, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
With a tight-knit Russian-speaking community dating back to the 1800s, Cyrillic signs and newspapers, Russian baths, Putin coffee mugs, and more fur coats than you can shake a stick at, you'll be forgiven for thinking you've landed in the Ukraine, despite the sandy beach (which is probably not much warmer than the Black Sea).
Brooklyn's southernmost spot, Little Odessa has one of the highest concentration of Russian immigrants this side of the globe, and New York as a whole is home to over 700,000 of them.
Venues like Tatianas, where the vodka flows and folk dancing shows and traveling Russian acts are the main attraction, are super popular among locals and visitors alike. Take a tour of the neighborhood here.
Chinatown, Manhattan
Sure, most US cities can boast Chinatowns, but New York's is one of the oldest in the country, as well as outside of Asia.
Once you bypass the fake purses, knockoff perfumes and general insanity of Canal Street, you'll enter a surreal, bustling world full of fruit and veggie stands overflowing with exotic produce you've never seen before, open air fish markets writhing with live eels, and parks full of people playing Xiàngqí (Chinese chess).
Dense and boisterous, Chinatown has 103,060 people per square mile to New York’s 27,183.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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