Naeem Khandaker believes he can see the future, and the future he sees is fuchka.
Mr. Khandaker claimed he was the first person in America to sell the Bengali snack — crispy and orb-like, sweet and spicy in a single bite — when he opened his street cart five years ago on a busy corner in Queens. Today, no fewer than eight fuchka carts, with near-identical menus and similar design aesthetics, operate within a one-block radius of his original spot.
Imitation, in New York, is often the sincerest form of entrepreneurship. But commercial copycatting in the city rarely comes with the physical proximity, personal familiarity and cheeky gamesmanship of the fuchka free-for-all deliciously erupting in Jackson Heights.
“The first fuchka cart in USA,” trumpets the sign on Tong, Mr. Khandaker’s business, on the northeast corner of 73rd Street and 37th Avenue.
“We are the original,” retorts the banner atop Fuskahouse, confusingly, a few feet away.
“We are real,” proposes Fuchka Garden, a couple more steps east, elevating the debate onto the astral plane.
Everybody is copying Mr. Khandaker’s idea, but he could not be happier about it. He’d feel more peeved, he said, if this were merely about money. Tong is flourishing, anyway, with multiple carts, a new restaurant and plans to grow. And some time ago his motivations grew to include the boosting of Bangladeshi food, long invisible outside of his country, in the collective culinary consciousness.
“If you showed an iPhone 13 to someone from 50 years ago and said, ‘This is a phone,’ would they believe it?” he said. “I saw the future. I felt it. I did something different.”
Tong was, indeed, first. Mr. Khandaker, 30, who grew up in Khulna, in southern Bangladesh, came to America as an international student in 2014 and was dismayed to see so many Bangladeshi people selling food from other countries — namely India — or selling Bengali dishes under non-Bengali names.
Fuchka, in his eyes, was easy to love: spherical semolina shells, chipped open and filled with savory potato, yellow peas, onion, chili and cilantro, then adorned with shavings of hard-boiled egg, before being splashed with tangy tamarind sauce. It is a close cousin of gol gappa and pani puri, snacks from India whose names had earned some recognition in the United States. But for Mr. Khandaker, it was of utmost importance to call fuchka by its name.
When Tong opened in 2018, the crowd of unbelievers included Mr. Khandaker’s wife, he said. She left him a few weeks after Tong opened, he said, unmoved by his vision. (He feels no ill will toward her today, he emphasized multiple times.)
He said tears often fluttered down his face as he cooked in those early days. But the toil paid off, and after lines began forming at Tong, other carts began sprouting down the block, like mushrooms on a forest floor.
First came Fuskahouse (fuchka is sometimes spelled fuska). Then Star Fuska. Then Fuchka Garden, right next to Fuskahouse. Then the Fuskahouse owner opened a second cart on the street, flanking Fuchka Garden on both sides.
It was as if Ray’s Pizza, Ray’s Original Pizza, Famous Ray’s Pizza and World-Famous Original Ray’s Pizza had been herded onto a single city block.
As Mr. Khandaker serenely pointed out, each of these new owners — their carts now lined up neatly in a row, each in a similar green hue — had previously worked at Tong. They had memorized his playbook and started facsimile businesses — a move reminiscent of how Wolfgang Zwiener, the longtime headwaiter at Peter Luger Steak House, vamoosed to open Wolfgang’s Steakhouse.
But even Wolfgang’s was not bold enough to open right next door.
Shawon Malaker, 23, who runs Fuchka Garden with his father, called Mr. Khandaker “a pioneer.”
Mr. Khandaker is not too humble to take a compliment: “Not everybody has the courage to be in the jungle and make a path for other people,” he said.
More recently, other carts not formerly affiliated with Tong have emerged nearby: Tasty Fuchka, Fuska Ghar and one unnamed vendor manning a folding table nearby.
They have made the block a destination, the same way other slivers of New York become one-stop depots for specific goods — like the Diamond District on 47th Street, or the way leather once dominated Orchard Street, or how the Bowery was once home to dozens of lighting stores, now slowly disappearing.
And street carts are often the doorways through which unfamiliar dishes enter the mainstream. The recent omnipresence of birria tacos in New York, for example, can be traced to the celebrated arrival of Birria-Landia, a Mexican truck a few blocks from Tong, which itself was following a wave of birria on the West Coast.
“For a long time, we didn’t have fuchka in New York,” said Shamiur Rahman, 43, originally of Bangladesh, as he grabbed a plate from Star Fuska one recent afternoon. “It’s a taste of home. I grew up on this.”
Every night in Jackson Heights, plastic stools line the sidewalk, fluorescent lights flicker off the sidewalk and customers socialize past midnight. Good vibes predominate.
But not always. Like longtime roommates, they cannot help but get on each other’s nerves. When asked, for instance, about Fuskahouse’s “original” claim, Mr. Khandaker’s tenderhearted tone evaporates.
“If I’m being honest, when I saw this, I felt disgusted,” he said. “If somebody does this, this is cheating.”
Masud Rahman, the owner of Fuskahouse, said his sign was merely trying to convey that his fuchka was “authentic.”
Mr. Khandaker and Mr. Rahman, who not only worked together but also briefly lived together, are no longer on speaking terms.
Given the tight quarters, tensions sometimes boil over. This summer, the police were called to break up an argument between Mr. Rahman and Mr. Malaker, of Fuchka Garden. Mr. Malaker accused Mr. Rahman of pushing him while the two were trying to lure the same group of customers.
Mr. Rahman recalls the interaction somewhat differently: “I said, ‘Excuse me, move out of the way,’” he said.
Mr. Khandaker, for his part, has expanded his empire to eight carts across Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx and a restaurant in Jamaica, Queens. And with a business partner from Bangladesh, he has plans to bring fuchka around the country in the form of Tong franchises.
Unsurprisingly, he might have competition. He is constantly contacted these days by people outside the city who have started, or are planning to start, fuchka businesses and are seeking advice: Upstate New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Texas, even London.
Another business owner might be stressed about the mimicry.
“But I’m happy,” Mr. Khandaker said. “They are not ashamed to put a Bangladeshi name on a Bangladeshi store.”