Palermo’s Story

Palermo is a reflection of Queens’ culinary mosaic, where flavor follows fluency, and not ethnicity. Stepping into the sunlit patio of this Astoria restaurant, and the scent of roasted garlic, slow-cooked tomato sauce, and olive oil focaccia bread, transports you to the Mediterranean. But this isn’t a little old Nonna’s kitchen. It’s Kozeta Zoto’s.

A Greek-Albanian immigrant, Kozata has spent 25 years perfecting her knowledge of Italian kitchens and cuisines, not through heritage, but through sheer hustle. “It started with pasta”, she said in our interview, laughing. “I fell in love with the rhythm of the kitchen, how each sauce had its character and depth.” She didn’t just learn the workings of Italian food; she lived it, from shadowing Sicilian chefs and restaurant managers in midtown trattorias to managing busy kitchens where she learned to balance tradition and consistency. The depth of the experience inspired her to open Palermo in 2013, in the neighborhood infamous for gyros, mezze, and now, homemade linguini.¹

Walk into the restaurant today and you’ll find the fruits of her knowledge on the menu. Such as the eggplant rollatini, for example, is not drenched in cheese, but lightly layered, allowing any sweetness of the roasted eggplant to shine through. The dough of the focaccia bread is precisely fermented for 48 hours, a technique she had only noted with experience. This is not an Italian “by the book” operation, but a lived-in, studied, and respectable approach to flavor.

Now, as Kozeta nears retirement, she has passed the reins down to her son-in-law, Pano Georgoulis. A native New Yorker who was raised in a Greek household, with a whole new shift to bring to the table. A generational shift to the restaurant’s vision. “I wanted to keep my mother-in-law’s integrity,” he told us, “but also reflect who we are today, more global, more connected, and one big famiglia (family in Italian).” He’s introduced more trendy specials, such dessert dessert-themed martinis, and fun Instagram reels for their best entrees, but still insists on locally sourced meat and vegetables, saying, “You can modernize the format, but not the heart.”²

In many other cities, a Greek-Albanian family running an Italian restaurant might raise eyebrows. In Queens, it barely registers. As Pano said, “My grandma could make moussaka; Kozeta knew mousakka and lasagna. The layering felt vaguely familiar.” That familiarity, that Mediterranean cross-cultural fluency, is what makes Palermo thrive. It’s not just about claiming Italian identity, it’s about honoring its cuisine with precision, respect, and an open mind.

This kind of culinary remix is what New York does best. Just as sushi made by Dominicans or tacos made by Bangladeshis, authenticity is found through expression, sheer skill, and dedication. Palermo’s tells a story: one not bound by bloodline, but by care, repetition, and good taste.

Queens is the World

There’s something piquant about walking through Astoria at night; the mix of halal lamb platters and Greek fish taverns fills the air with the scent of a dozen countries in a single whiff. Queens as a whole is known to be the most diverse borough of the five, making it a breeding ground for cultural fusion and interconnectedness.

Queens is a large borough nestled on top of Brooklyn and west of Long Island. According to the New York state website, Queens is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse urban areas, with residents often identifying more with their neighborhood than with the borough or city.³ The borough is made of many smaller, distinct neighborhoods, each with its own identity, and even its own languages, grocery stores, community, and religious centers. These little enclaves span from Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Asian, Caribbean, and South American descent, creating a mesh of traditions, languages, and cultures. This overlap makes Queens a breeding ground for cross-cultural establishments to exist and thrive.

New York City is called a “melting pot”; this is a phrase that suggests immigrants from every corner of the world would blend into one homogeneous soup. But Queens, especially Astoria, resists that narrative. This calls for a new metaphor, “the mosaic”: a vivid collage of cultures where they don’t just blend but rather sit side by side, distinct yet connected, and hopefully these pieces come to make a beautiful picture. In Astoria, it’s perfectly normal to pass a Colombian bakery, a Greek diner, a Bangladeshi grocery, and an Italian restaurant, all on the same block. One would expect that traditions get diluted, but in reality, they are celebrated in parallel, and we see bridges form between cultures without erasing what makes them unique. Like the grout in a mosaic, shared space and mutual respect hold this vibrant patchwork together.

New England author J.M. Tyree offered a non-New Yorker perspective, dubbing Queens as “United Nations of New York”, cultural lies blur, and it feels less like a surprise and more like a rhythm of daily life. In Queens, Dominican sushi chefs and Indian taco stands are part of the landscape, and authenticity is earned by sheer experience and care, not just ancestry. Tyree states, “Queens is a pile of shreds and patches of exquisite fabrics, junked by the curbside, that don’t quite add up to a suit, no matter how you try to sew them together. But here’s to the bodge.”⁴ In this context, a Greek-Albanian woman opening an Italian restaurant doesn’t seem out of place – it feels entirely natural. Palermo is a reflection of the borough’s culinary mosaic, where flavor follows fluency, not ethnicity.

Who Gets to Be ‘Authentic’?

What is authenticity? When can someone claim authenticity? When the average person names examples of authenticity, we may think of focaccia bread or eggplant parmesan for Italians; inauthentic would be chicken parmesan and fettuccine alfredo (both American-made dishes). Well, on the far end of academia, there are the anthropologists, these scholars study tirelessly the meaning of authenticity, and if it’s even a thing at all. Anthropologist Richard Handler writes, “In modern society, the temple of authenticity is the museum, where we display the objects or pieces of culture that stand for the cultures of their possessors-creators.”⁵

If you were not raised with a culture, how does one achieve authenticity? That is what is highly touched upon in design historian Nicolas P. Maffei’s paper, where he analyzes Mexican American food packaging, design, and architecture. Maffei emphasizes that what individuals internally seek when wanting “authentic” food is familiarity. He states that common designs, such as the infamous purple bell and pattern tiles in places like Taco Bell, are what give that false illusion of attempted authenticity, when in reality, it is simply imaginary foods created with the underlying tone of Mexican foods. Maffei has a statement that allows you to ponder on authenticity concerning food, and that being, “‘Authenticity’ was not derived from images of ethnicity and nation but from the food itself.” The merits of such a reality may positively disconnect a nation’s individuality from the mere popularity of its foods. Food designers often go to great lengths to create images of foods that elude the sensory experience that comes from the actual culture.⁶

The sentiments of these anthropologists leave us with one vague conclusion: to achieve authenticity, one must have a basic understanding of the culture they wish to express and place things such as food ingredients and design in the direct context of said culture.

This is where these cross-cultural ownership restaurants, like Palermo and others like it across Queen’s, complicate the narrative. These are places where the owners are not native to the cuisine they serve; authenticity becomes less about inherited identity and more about practiced intention. A Greek-Albanian woman running an Italian restaurant may not be conventional, but her decades of immersion in Italian Kitchens, mastering recipes for the sauces, perfecting doughs, and learning from old-school chefs, provide a valid form of cultural fluency. Furthermore, her deep connection to her own culture further helped her understand the general Mediterranean diet as well. As anthropologist Milton Singer states, understanding one’s own culture can improve your appreciation of others.⁷

Rather than relying on sleazy branding or subliminal ethnic cues, restaurants like these lean into the food itself, with imported ingredients, time-honored techniques, and a deep respect for traditional aspects of the culture.
In cities like New York, cultural boundaries are porous; this version of authenticity may be the honest food: that is, food rooted in tradition, but filtered through the hands and hearts of those who chose it.

Gatekeepers, Neighborhoods, and What’s ‘Ours’

Gerteis and Smajda’s 2012 study, “Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a ‘Sauce-Scented Neighborhood,’” examines how Boston’s well-known Italian North End fights for its ethnic identity amidst mass Americanization and commercialization. The authors state that Italian identity is highly apparent but contested because the residents, business owners, and newcomers of the North End clash over the idea of “cultural authenticity”. The study focuses on food as an integral aspect of the neighborhood. Restaurants and shops began to sell the “Italian” experience to tourists, making the area feel like an ‘Italian Disneyland’. Longtime residents argued that this image, painted by newer businesses, turned their culture into a spectacle, losing its meaning. The residents even went the extra mile to fight against chains in the area and preserve their ethnic boundaries.⁸ Food traditions serve as a means of economic prosperity as well as a symbol of belonging and identity in an ever-changing urban setting.

In Boston’s North End, non-Italian restaurants have faced community pushback. In New York, you’re more likely to get a Michelin star. Blending backgrounds is not just accepted, it’s almost the norm. In neighborhoods like the ones in Queens, cultures don’t just coexist and they intersect in surprising ways. A cafe might have flavors from Germany but then be run by people from a completely different continent, and a classic trattoria might just thrive on the care of a family with no Italian lineage whatsoever. This in NYC is not surprising whatsoever, it’s just expected.

In New York, success is often less rigid with cultural purity than exhibited in the North End example, but instead is more about your audience, your food, and your place in this urban mosaic with more tiles added by the day. The city doesn’t demand authenticity in its most literal sense; instead, it drives towards sincerity, diversity, creativity, and the ability to connect across tables, languages, and generations.

1. Pano Georgoulis, Palermo interview, Athena Eyzaguirre. ↩︎
2. Pano Georgoulis, Palermo interview, Athena Eyzaguirre. ↩︎
3. The State of New York. “Queens | the State of New York,” n.d. ↩︎
4. J. M. Tyree. “The United Nations of Queens: The Undiscovered Borough.” The Antioch Review 63, no. 4 (2005): 646–65. ↩︎
5. Richard Handler. “Authenticity.” Anthropology Today 2, no. 1 (1986): 2–4. ↩︎
6. Nicolas P. Maffei. “Surveying the Borders:” In Berghahn Books, 211–25, 2018. ↩︎
7. Milton Singer. “ON UNDERSTANDING OTHER CULTURES AND ONE’S OWN.” The Journal of General Education 19, no. 1 (1967): 1–23. ↩︎
8. Joseph Gerteis and Jon Smajda. “Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a ‘Sauce-Scented Neighborhood.’” Sociological Forum 27, no. 3 (2012): 617–40. ↩︎