In Search of Flushing's Best Street Food With Mark Canha and Trevor May, the New York Mets' Resident Foodies

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In Search of Flushing's Best Street Food With the New York Mets' Resident Foodies
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In Search of Flushing's Best Street Food With the New York Mets' Resident Foodies
On the field, outfielder Mark Canha and reliever Trevor May have helped rejuvenate the Mets' fortunes. Off it, they've embraced life in the Big Apple.
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New York Mets pitcher Trevor May gave me an emphatic “Fuck yeah!” in the dugout when I invited him to be my lunchmate. No surprise there. Back in 2020, the veteran reliever closed his introductory press conference by shouting out, no lie, a sandwich from Benateri’s, an Italian deli made not far from his new stadium. For May, the team's first signing under new owner Steve Cohen, the chicken cutlet, bacon, and mozzarella masterpiece confirmed he chose the right team. For me, it was a sign he might join a Queens kid like myself on a food crawl.
Outfielder Mark Canha slid into my DMs the next day, asking when and where we should pregame. The first-year Met became a near-immediate fan favorite for banging out clutch hits, the result of a patient and productive approach that has helped revitalize a top-five offense. Beyond what he does at the plate or in left field, Canha carries himself with a goofy , townie ethos that fits perfectly in his new home. (If you’ve ever known a white thirty-something dad without any mob ties from, like, Middle Village, then trust me: you know Mark Canha.) Oh, and he spends his free time informally micro-blogging his best meals from his @ bigleaguefoodie Instagram account.
And so, with the Mets blitzing through their strongest season in decades, two of the team’s crucial glue guys joined me in Jackson Heights, a South American and Asian enclave in New York’s most diverse borough—and a haven for foodies in search of cheap, cross-continental cuisines. The neighborhood’s state Senator Jessica Ramos, equal parts foodie and Mets fan , helped me build a list we could chew through before warmups.
We started at Raja Sweets & Fast Foods, a vegetarian purveyor of the savory potato and pea mash I was pining for, deep fried in a flaky, doughy gift wrap. The cashier helped Canha work through his indecision by pushing us to try their densely chutneyed samosa chaat. She also had us throw in some paneer naan, a flatbread they served warm, and a perfect foil for the dipping sauces.
Mark Canha (left), Trevor May (right), after a successful stop at Raja Sweets & Food with writer Bradford Davis (center).
Courtesy of Johnny Navarro
Canha began comparing and contrasting the more subtle dish with other versions he’s had in past dalliances with the North Indian pastry. May, meanwhile, stressed his praise with Homer Simpsonsonian rhythm: “Soooo flaky. Perfectly cooked.”
Besides being game for a food tour, Canha and May have much in common. They’re both 33 years old, playoff-tested vets ready for a taste of major-market action. Canha and May left the Oakland A’s and Minnesota Twins, respectively, enticed by their new team owner’s hedge fund spoils, and willing to shoulder the expectations of a famished franchise starving for October relevance. Neither will be mistaken for their teammate Francisco Lindor, who stays busy lighting up the field with slick plays almost as smooth as the jewels he rocks in his endorsement deals . They’re here to play their role. They’re the subtle notes you might find in a perfectly cooked samosa.
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There’s a reason these guys were game to tag along. Neither were hotshot prospects destined for superstardom but instead had to claw their way through each rung of the minors. Bound by sub-poverty minor-league wages and rapidly dwindling signing bonuses, they had to come up with creative ways to fuel up.
“When I went to the Twins, I learned that Joe Mauer had a tuna melt before every single game,” said May, referring to that team's hometown hero catcher. “So like, the whole entire organization started eating tuna melts for a year…I started getting kinda adventurous with different sauces.”
For Canha, a call-up to the bigs meant more than just a lifelong dream fulfilled. Two days before he was selected by the A’s in the Rule 5 Draft—which all but signaled his making the big-league team—a double date with former Cal teammate Trevor Hildenberger and his food-blogging wife, Kristin, gave him the idea to use the next phase of his life as an opportunity to try the best foods in every baseball city. “She told me about what she was doing”—you can still find her popular food diary under the #BayAreaEats hashtag—“and I was like, ‘Well, I'm gonna steal that idea, if you don't mind.’” She gave him her blessing, and Big League Foodie was born.
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After more than holding his own on a rebuilding A’s club, the rookie celebrated with a reservation with wife Marci at Napa’s French Laundry—as Canha put it, “the first really expensive meal I ever bought.”
For May, who spent his minor league offseasons crashing at a friend’s University of Washington dorm, a major league call-up meant he was finally able to indulge his love of sushi. “You go to Seattle and you try sushi and you're like, ‘All sushi is this good!’ Then you go to, like, fuckin' Ohio and you're like...No, it isn't. Lake sushi ain't doing it.” When May reached free agency, he made sure to hit Seattle’s renowned Sushi Kashiba.
Order up.
Courtesy of Johnny Navarro
An hour into our hang, just 15 minutes from Citi Field, we met our first and only fan of the day .
“Good luck tonight, Mark!” the passerby said, offering a subtle wave without making a scene, as we plowed into an assortment of empanadas from Seba Seba, a homey Colombian diner.
Canha doesn’t need the luck—the advanced stats site Fangraphs rates him 26% better than the league at the plate. Even bad luck seems to work out for him. Canha missed the Citi Field home opener with his first case of COVID—rough for a dude who spent his early pandemic taking a virtual public health course at Berkeley. But fully vaccinated, boosted, and blessed with a safe place to isolate, Canha spent his first week as a New Yorker indulging in the food scene.
“Realizing the delivery options available on the Upper West Side was like, Oh my God, this is awesome.” He wore out his DoorDash ordering in for every meal—brunch staple Jacob’s Pickles one day and Bodrum Mediterranean (“Their baba ganoush is, like, unbelievable.”) the next.
“Because I live in Arizona, I don't get to eat like that,” Canha said of the limited options of his offseason home. “And it's been a while since we lived in San Francisco. It’s just like, you remember how great it is to be in a city where there's really good food.” The city, in turn, is glad to have him: in an era when most facilities are in the suburbs, and most athletes live near where they practice, Canha recalls Mets legends like Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, who relished living in Manhattan when they played for the franchise’s last World Series winner.
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Back on 37th Ave., Canha thanked the fan for the well-wishes, and left May to chime in, sarcastically: “And Trevor? Good luck for me too?”
Despite the team’s runaway success, May could use the support. The Mets signed to protect narrow leads until trumpet-blasting closer Edwin Diaz could enter the game. But he hasn’t been that guy in 2022, blowing leads and battling a triceps injury. And for a guy who relishes connecting with fans on social media—May has about half a million followers across Twitter , Instagram and Twitch —being extremely online has only amplified a tough year and a tougher crowd. His self-deprecating humor can only do so much: when I dared him to add some extra heat to his fastball by downing some Indian hot sauce right before he took the mound, he tilted his head and palms to the heavens and joked, “Please, make me average again.”
It’s been a tough year. After getting rocked the entire month of April, May hit the injured list with triceps trouble. Two weeks later, his beloved cat Donny died after falling from his Long Island City high-rise balcony. May and his wife, Kate, commissioned a painting to commemorate Donny’s life.
The sudden and traumatic loss of his cat, compounded with the temporary loss of his ability to take the hill, prompted deeper reflection.
“I was hurt and really pissed off about how long [rehab] was going to be, how the season started and how the team was and how I wasn't gonna be a part of it,” May told me. “You just gotta be at peace, with the fact that whatever you lost, the reason you're so upset about it is … you loved it so much.”
May realized the best thing he could do during this sad stretch was to “get out of the of the apartment”—where his activities were largely limited to gaming, streaming, and general doomscrolling—“and have a nice meal with someone who matters to you.” And so Trevor and Kate grieved Donny May at The Baronness, a Vernon Avenue gastropub. May still vividly remembers ordering The Dixie—a brisket and short rib patty blend brushed with a honey molasses glaze and smeared roasted garlic-rosemary aioli.
Pieces of food from a Queens eatery on August 26, 2022.Courtesy of Johnny Navarro
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The meal was delicious. But it only softened the sting so much. May is more gregarious and transparent than the average modern athlete, eager to share the inner folds of pro athlete life—he’s been open, for instance, about his ADHD diagnosis. And usually, his pro baseball player clout helps his second life as a Twitch influencer.
His commitment to posting is steadfast, even in moments likely to bring him backlash. May spent the summer of 2020 answering fans angry he knelt during the national anthem, along with his former Minnesota Twins teammate Byron Buxton, in honor of George Floyd. ( “I wasn't gonna let Buck kneel by himself,” May said of his decision.)
Weeks later, when Kenosha, Wisconsin police shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake from the waist down, the same birds grieving burning buildings more than broken spines roared back in his mentions. Why? Because when Buxton and teammate LaMonte Wade Jr. pulled themselves out of the lineup, May joined them. The rest of the ballclub eventually followed. Remember: this ain’t the NBA. Wade and Buxton were the only Black Americans on the team. Yet somehow, May helped them convince all 28 guys— yeah, even Josh Donaldson —to back their brothers instead of backing the Blue .
“I've had conversations in DMs with police officers in the area who were not happy with me because they felt villainized,” May recalled. But he could see the daily Black Lives Matter marches from his apartment window, which he said was a few blocks from where Derek Chauvin crushed Floyd’s neck. “And I had to basically had to just say, ‘You know, there's 50,000 people walking on the street. You think they're just doing that because? Or are they mad about something?’” He had a question for his audience: “Are you listening to what they're saying? Or, are you mad that they're mad?”
This year, though? With so-called fans reminding him he was flirting with the worst year of his career? Even after games he didn’t even play ? It was enough to convince the Mets’ most online player to take a break.
So May only tweets his Let’s Go Mets posts after wins, stuffed with specific emojis that symbolize his teammates—a deliberate choice to protect his peace. “If I wasn't so, like, bought into the fact that I'm gonna have to go on there and be really active again after [I retire], I would just delete everything.”
Expert sauce application from May here.
Courtesy of Johnny Navarro
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It takes a particularly chill and unpretentious set of multimillionaires to join a tour of a working-class hood’s greasy street food, and to do so hours before a ballgame.
But, after I put the crawl together, I couldn’t help but wonder: which Mets were missing? Maybe it was Eduardo Escobar, the Venezuelan third baseman who might get the most out of Jackson Heights’ atlas-worthy assortment of South American flavors—and even have a few suggestions of his own. Or what about Taijuan Walker? In September, Walker opened Tai’s Tacos, a taco truck pop-up to raise money for a local foster care organization.
So, before we washed down our meals at 969 Cafe, a Japanese spot close enough to Roosevelt that you can feel the 7 train to Citi Field rumble overhead, I posed the question: besides you guys, who’s the biggest foodie on the team?
Canha and May gave their answer in unison: Pete Alonso.
“Pete’s a pretty big foodie,” said May. Motioning a chef’s kiss, he adds: “Big on quality.” Canha said he hits the slugging first baseman for Manhattan recs.
(Grinning from ear to ear, Alonso was anything but bashful when I told him what his teammates said. “Absolutely. It's absolutely true. I mean, I love eating a good meal,” he said, no surprise from a man nicknamed the Polar Bear. “I mean, that's one of the beautiful and simple things in life. I love eating good food. It’s just simple as that.”)
Over iced lattes—a mocha for May; almond matchas for Canha and me—the role players were effusive about their squad. May played for a 100-win Twins team that set the all-time home run record, but he said he’s convinced this Mets team “is special in a way that I’ve never been part of before.”
“We're definitely more well-rounded [and] built for the playoffs,” he said. “The way our starting pitching is, we got two dudes”—Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, icons who don’t need to be named to be known—“who are just gonna take over a playoff game.”
Added Canha, “I think have to happen for you to win a World Series you have to get lucky in a lot of ways. But if our offense can find a way to get even a little bit of rhythm in the playoffs, I like our chances.”
That night, Canha had two huge hits—stuffing the box score with a go-ahead double in the fifth, then tying it up again with another double in the eighth. Canha’s play served up Alonso’s joyous walk-off in the bottom of the ninth. That meant Alonso got the water cooler ice bath and postgame accolades, too. That was fine by Canha, who knows better than most that a great meal needs all the ingredients to bring out the subtler notes.