BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger
ASTORIA — It was a brutally cold winter, which means fig season is a bit delayed this year.
Astoria’s second annual Fig Festival on Saturday, September 12, however, is still a go. A walk through the neighborhood in late summer reveals the jammy, purple fruit’s incredible abundance: They spill from front yards, backyards, sidewalk tree lawns, and allegedly, a secret grove hidden in a far corner of Astoria Park
The event, organized by fig aficionado Jordan Engel and urbanist Alma Hutter, celebrates the neighborhood’s remarkable density of figs and other fruit trees with food offerings and neighborly exchange of botanical wisdom.
On a recent, sunny September afternoon, Engel points out a pair of ripe figs painted onto the street on 31st Ave between 33rd and 34th St. Not far away, a fig tree pokes out of a patch of green between the street and sidewalk — the work of an unknown guerilla gardener.
Once you know to look for the dark green, five-pointed leaves and drooping, acorn-shaped fruit, Astoria transforms into a fig forest. Every corner of the neighborhood seems to have been colonized by the humble fig tree, the result of the plant’s unique versatility and preference by Astoria’s immigrant inhabitants, many of whom hail from Mediterranean countries where figs are abundant, like Greece, Italy, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine.
“They are super easy to propagate,” Engel said. “That’s one reason they traveled over here— because people could just put it in their luggage and sort of smuggle it in from across the ocean and maintain that connection to their home.”
The festival features two parts: An open-air, fig-forward food market on Saturday starting at 1pm, which will also feature tabling from NYC food and environmental justice organizations like Big Reuse, Falling Fruit, PlantxChange nyc, NYC Planting, Urban Forest Co-op, Smiling Hogshead Ranch, and the Bronx River Foodway, many of which belong to the NYC Food Forests Coalition.
There’s also Fig Week, which lasts from Monday, September 7 to Sunday, September 13 and features creative, fig-forward dishes on the menus of participating local restaurants throughout the week. Expect specialties like fig cake at Mrs. Georgia, fig pizza from Pronto Pizzeria, fig tapas from the Spanish restaurant Sala, prosciutto-cantaloupe-fig salad from Sotto la Luna, a whiskey fig cocktail from Hutch, a fig, serrano ham, and buffalo mozzarella antipasto from Vite Vinosteria, and a fig and shrimp crudo from Botte Ditmars.
Botte Ditmars co-owner Manuele Battistini grew up in Tuscany not far from the city of Florence. He confirmed that figs are indeed a major part of life in this corner of the Mediterranean basin, though they’re more often consumed for dessert than they are for dinner.
“I remember when I was a kid, my grandfather had a fig tree in the garden,” Battistini said. “I was eating figs directly from the tree.”
The risotto Botte is serving for fig week is not so traditional, but still delicious, he said. The figs are caramelized, and the broth that the rice is cooked in is flavored with fig leaves, imparting a delicate and distinctive flavor.
“I like to work with the neighborhood where we are,” he continued. “I don’t want to just be there. I want to participate in what the neighborhood does.”
In preparation for the festival, Engel helps organize a fig exchange in Astoria each March to demonstrate this versatility: a fig tree branch, if cared for properly, will grow into another fig tree. Engel learned all this during his first few years in Astoria, where he moved four years ago after being priced out of his Brooklyn apartment. During his bike rides around the neighborhood, he quickly noticed the remarkable number of fruit trees: Peaches, persimmons, quinces were everywhere, but most noticeable were the fig trees. Engel started counting, and ultimately put together a map with 452 properties where he identified one or more fig trees. The total number in the neighborhood, Engel estimates, reaches well into the thousands.
But it was through conversations with his neighbors that Engel began to understand the relationship between the neighborhood’s demographics and its favorite fruit tree. He recalled a neighbor who moved from India in the 80s, who was gifted fig cuttings (branches) from a Filipino neighbor, who got their fig tree from a Greek who brought theirs from Greece.
For Hutter, Astoria’s fig trees represent possibility. New York has long grappled with food inequality, with as much as 11% of the population statewide facing food insecurity. Transforming a neighborhood into a place where fresh fruits fill the trees that line the streets is a powerful step towards bringing about food justice locally.
“Fig trees have a short and abundant season that insist on being shared with neighbors and it’s a reminder of abundance and alternative economies,” Hutter said. “It’s a really special thing to find food on your block, especially in a city that has really unequal fresh food access.”
The Astoria Fig Festival lasts from 12-4pm on Saturday, September 12 at 31 Avenue Open Street. For more information, check out @astoriafigfest on Instagram.
