Diversity on Front Street
Click and drag your cursor within the frame to view the three restaurants in Uniondale profiled in this article. (Jessica Burgos photos).
By Jessica Burgos and Amanda Chamberlain
Nassau News Staff Writers
Walking down Front Street in Uniondale, it’s hard not to notice the diversity on the streets from the people you see to the restaurants that are located on the sidewalks. From right to left you see restaurants with cuisines that range from West Indian\Jamaican to Salvadorian to delicatessens that serve potato salad and hamburgers.
“There were more bars than hairdressers,” Tohme said looking at the Korean- and Chinese-owned nail and beauty salons. Tohme is able to see a variety of people of different ethnicities walk in and out of his deli. He knows almost every customer by name, and if he doesn’t know your name, he will by the time you leave. Many of his employees are immigrants themselves.
Carlos Herrera, a cook at the deli, moved to Hempstead with his family from Puerto Rico when he was eight. From the time he arrived until recently, the area has gone downhill, he said. “Hempstead was a nice town to live in,” Herrera said,.“Now, it’s not so much.”
Due to the increase in gang and other crime activity, Jim’s insists on closing up shop by 7 p.m.: “This town is good. At night it gets weird.”
Just two stores down, is a West Indian restaurant that opened a year ago. The Tropical Jerk and Seafood Center caters mostly to people of Caribbean descent but,the vice president of the small business, Sophia Forbes, has noticed a change in diversity on Front Street. Forbes decided to open the restaurant on Front street because it is a main street,.they have a large population of Hofstra students, students from surrounding schools and business people coming to eat there. Forbes said she has noticed an increase in Hispanic people in Uniondale and Hempstead. “They help each other out and bond together, to better each other.”
Just directly across the street serving Salvadorian cuisine, Restaurante Eugenia has a mostly Hispanic clientele. A quaint mom-and-pops restaurant, Restaurante Eugenia's has employees who are all from El Salvador and do not speak English. The restaurant often sees the same customers coming in, though they do enjoy a variety of people who eat there, all from Hispanic backgrounds ranging from Mexican to Dominican. There you can try traditional dishes from El Salvador from antojitos to pupusas (tortilla with variety of bean, cheese or pork filling, camarones(shrimp), pollo(chicken) and tacos. Pupusas are their most commonly ordered cuisine.
A long time customer of Jim’s Delicatessen, Anthony Perez, said that he has noticed a change in the demographics in Nassau County. He remembers as a child being one of the few Hispanic children in his elementary school class. “Here on Front Street you can find just about any type of cuisines.”
