The MVBHS Food Pantry is the cornerstone of our efforts to support our community. This blog, along with both our Comfort Food Cookbooks, are a part of our initiative to make sure no students go hungry. If you can help, please go to mvbhsaa.com. You can, for a small donation, download a copy of either edition of our cookbooks and help make a difference. 

​Queens is the Melting Pot of the World.  Queens is the most ethnically diverse urban area on the planet, where residents often closely identify with their neighborhood, rather than being a part of New York City. If Queens were an independent city, it would also be the nation's fourth most populous city. Over 150 languages are spoken in the borough, and its streets are the cultural crossroads of everywhere imaginable.  We have created our blog to feature the foods, highlight the cultures and share the stories that brings together this amalgam of people from all over the world. Our students and staff, as well as our alumni at Martin Van Buren High School, are representative of this diversity and reflect the cross pollination of cultures we hope this blog will help intensify. We are the MVB community and our goal is to share our worlds with the world.
 
Hometown Highlights features the places where each of us came from, and what makes it so special in our eyes.  We have learned from our Give Hope to Help Initiative and the Comfort Food Cookbook project more about where our students, teachers, alumni, and friends came from before joining the MVB community, and wanted to share with everyone what makes them so special.
 
Hidden Gems is our insider’s guide to the many wonderful but often unknown food establishments that are sprinkled all over Queens.  Who better to act as your navigator to the very best ethnic foods across the borough than our own community.  We also are featuring these wonderful culinary establishments as a way to support one of the hardest hit areas from the pandemic in the hopes that our features will bring more business, and help solidify their prospects to continue to showcase the extraordinary cuisines each have.  This is our way of allowing you to travel the world without leaving Queens.

The Recipe Box is where we are sharing more of the cherished dishes that provide comfort to those who eat these traditional family recipes.  We have already created two Comfort Food Cookbooks, available at www.mvbhsaa.com, and together they have nearly 400 recipes from 80 different countries.  But we didn’t want to stop there, and so are continuing to collect and share these special foods from all over the world.  We want everyone to try these and share them with friends and family.  We are also eager to receive your own favorite recipe, just forward it to us at [email protected]

​We are a community high school serving a very diverse population of students and our community at large.  We welcome your presence on our blog and hope you will follow us and contribute to it.  We invite you to share your culinary favorites in Queens and a short feature of your hometown as we look to unite the world at large by connecting over the foods and cultures of everyone.