Jungly

12-23 Jackson Avenue • junglynyc.com

We spoke with Owner Suraj Patel and Brand Strategist Shreya Khanna of Jungly:

Can you share a bit about your background, your career, and your path to becoming a small business owner?

Suraj: Basically after college, I just didn’t want to do the corporate life anymore. I started helping my father out with his hotel business in Brooklyn. Then I started fully taking over that. Me and Rohan (my business partner) met 15 or 20 years ago and he was in the restaurant business at Bellucci’s. I had been in hospitality as well, but just a different side of it. And then I just kept bothering Rohan like “I want a bar, I want a bar, I want a bar.” He was like “Trust me, you don’t.” Then Bellucci’s was closing down, so there was space available in Forest Hills and we turned that into Queens Bully. It was so much fun to do. We wanted to be in Queens specifically because of how diverse it is and we wanted to reflect that on our menu, that it’s a melting pot. There’s literally no rules for our menu, we’ll add or take off what we need to to make sure everybody is happy. We do a bunch of work with the community and it just took off that way. People know us because of the events we do and the fun stuff we do to get the community involved so that Queens is not forgotten. You don’t have to leave to go to Manhattan or Brooklyn to have a good time and that’s why we opened up in Long Island City now. I’ve lived here for 10 years. 

Shreya: We collaborate with local businesses as well. Suraj and Rohan vision has always been like. They go by #QueensForever, which is something that they really stand by. It’s their borough and where they’ve been brought up. And also showcasing the young talent and the young businesses. There is so much happening here. This collaboration we have with Lillith as well is just for us to join hands with local entrepreneurs to actively promote each other and lift each other up. 

Suraj: We don’t see anybody as competition. We see everybody as a collaborator. I don’t expect the same person to come to my restaurant every single day. I want them to go see other places. Us coming to Long Island City is hopefully bringing more traction to other businesses also. We collaborate with everybody, other restaurants, DJs, artists. We try to keep it just straight Queens and NY-based only to give a voice to people. It’s just who we are. We want everybody to be successful, which can only work if we all work together. 

Why did you decide to open Jungly in Long Island City?

Suraj: Because I’ve lived here. We wanted to find a cool space for people to stay in. Something we thought was missing from the neighborhood was a lounge for everybody. In LIC, you could either go to a nice restaurant or a pub. People would get dinner here and then leave to go to Manhattan or Brooklyn. We’re trying to attract that crowd here. Even our customers that come in now, we have a Moms group that comes in, they’re like ‘oh we didn’t know what you guys were’ because the way it’s built, it looks like a lounge, but we’re kid friendly. 
We had the opportunity to be in Manhattan but this location just jumped at us. The owner reached out to us, after family came to Queens Bully a lot, to see if we could bring that vibe to Long Island City. There’s a lot of young families here. 

Shreya: After COVID, I feel like more people started exploring LIC. There are so many new restaurants that have opened here. And the travel, the commute, even if you’re living in Brooklyn or in Manhattan, you’re just a 5 minute subway ride away from LIC, so it’s actually very connected. And now there are so many young families here that are looking to call a spot their own and that’s what we’re trying to build. Also trying to bring the idea of the concrete Jungle to LIC because you can see Manhattan from here and you can also experience the best of New York in Long Island City. 

Suraj: We had the opportunity to be in Manhattan, but we want to bring the crowd from Manhattan here to get a taste of Queens. We started this thing at Queens Bully called 718 day. We started it just to give back to Queens. We invited other restaurants to come and do pop-up shops at Queens Bully. We did a food crawl. We’re going to bring that back this year to Jungly. We’re going to do a big food donation to this school by Queensbridge Houses to give out tons of meals to all the kids that need it. Then, we’re going to do a celebration here at Jungly. Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to buy food. We will have young artists here showing their work, young singers, musicians, brands, and then we’ll have a mini food hall in here, different tastes of Queens. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we collaborated with Hour Children in Long Island City, New York Relief, and we got so busy that we started giving back to other mom and pop shops in Queens. 

Shreya: They always give back to the community. 

What do you want the community to know about your business? 

Suraj: We are for everyone. 

Shreya: We’re not isolating ourselves from a certain community. We understand that LIC has a bunch of families and we try to do so much for them but we are also here for a Friday night when someone wants to let down their hair and just grab a drink. We have Arturo who makes the best cocktails and we have a great kitchen staff. We are constantly evolving our menu. We keep changing things up but we also keep that signature Jungly feel to our food and drinks. Our idea is to be as diverse as possible not only in terms of our menu but also the experiences we are offering. Right now we are appealing to sneakerheads with this pop-up shop and the day after that we might do another movie night for kids.

Suraj: On Saturday, we have a DJ here for brunch. On Sundays, we have a jazz band. During the holiday season we had a Santa bunch, we recently did an Easter brunch. We’re here for everybody.

Shreya: And we’re here to listen to people’s opinions. There’s someone who cam to Jungly for a movie night for kids and she commented on our post online and she was like “oh, what about a Bad Mom’s Christmas movie night?” so we heard them and we did that and it was fun. 

Suraj: We’re always talking to everybody. You’ll never see us hiding behind the scenes. We take suggestions and we’ll do it.

What is your favorite thing about Long Island City?

Suraj: My wife wants to move to Jersey and I said no. Especially now that I have a family, you get a little bit of everything in Long Island City. We live by the pier now, by Hunter’s Point and it’s fun for the family, it’s an easy commute to get everywhere. I lived in the Court Square area ten years ago and there was nothing here. We have everything popping up now, you have your shopping, nice restaurants, cool bars, cool art shows, MoMa PS1, there’s live music at Culture Lab. That’s something we want to do here at Jungly as well. Long Island City is not pretentious. One thing about us, we don’t want you to have to come in here with dress shoes and a blazer. Come in how you want. If you’re comfortable, come in. That’s what I love about Long Island City. It’s not restrictive, you see all kinds of people here. There’s so much to do here. I know in the summer especially things will really pick up.

Visit Jungly at 12-23 Jackson Ave.