Drive south from the Hicksville LIRR station on a Tuesday at 8 p.m. and the block between the train tracks and Old Country Road tells you something the rest of Nassau County does not. Open kitchens throw light onto the sidewalk. The smell of charcoal from a tandoor competes with the smell of smash-burger griddle from the storefront next door. Parking is a real problem, which on a suburban Tuesday is its own kind of review.
If you live here, you already know South Broadway is the food street. What has changed in the last two months is the density. Two significant openings in May and June 2026 pushed an already-packed corridor into a different category, and the summer calendar around it filled out to match.
The thesis, if you want one
South Broadway between the LIRR viaduct and Old Country Road is now the most concentrated halal and South Asian dining strip on Long Island, and it is still adding storefronts rather than losing them. That matters for a resident because the practical question shifts. It is no longer "is there somewhere to eat tonight." It is "which of the eight places within a five-minute walk of each other do I want tonight." Below is how the block reads in July 2026.
The corridor, address by address
| Address | Place | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 257 S. Broadway | Punjabi Dhaba | North Indian, open until 9:45 p.m. daily |
| 350 S. Broadway | Food Street | Pakistani-fusion, smash burgers, opened May 2026 |
| 405 S. Broadway | Diwan Indian Restaurant & Bar | Sit-down Indian with a full bar |
| 459 S. Broadway | Tandoor of Long Island | Pakistani BBQ, kebabs, nihari, paya |
| 495 S. Broadway | Kababjees | Karahi, biryani, weekend breakfast, halal |
| 646 S. Broadway | Coca | Lounge with a small live-music stage, soft-opened June 2026 |
Six addresses inside a half-mile. Every one of them is walkable from the others. If you are hosting cousins who flew in for a wedding, this is the block you point the Uber at.
The May opening that pulled a line down the sidewalk
Food Street opened its first New York location at 350 S. Broadway on a Tuesday in late May and drew lines out the door, packing its space in the Soni Centre strip mall on Route 107 throughout the day. Co-owner Sharry Chaudhari told Greater Long Island that the kitchen had to stop taking orders forty minutes after the posted closing time on opening day.
The interesting part is not that a new restaurant did opening-day numbers. The interesting part is the menu premise. The Hicksville location is Food Street's twelfth overall, and it pairs Pakistani dishes with smash burgers and South Asian comfort food, with signature chicken tikka paratha rolls, crispy chicken sandwiches, homemade teas, and desserts, all halal.
That is a specific bet on this block. Every other halal spot within four hundred feet is doing traditional service. Kababjees is doing karahi and biryani in a full sit-down format at 495 S. Broadway. Tandoor of Long Island is doing chicken tikka, nihari, and paya at 459. Food Street is threading between them by adding fast-casual American formats to the same halal kitchen. It is only viable because the surrounding demand already exists. You cannot open a Pakistani smash-burger concept as your anchor tenant. You can open it as the eighth South Asian option on the block.
The open-kitchen design is part of the pitch. "Everything we cook, you can see, and people love that," Chaudhari said. "Nothing is made ahead of time. You order it, we make it."
Food Street is at 350 S. Broadway and open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
What is new after dark
Daytime density on South Broadway has been the story for years. Nighttime is where the corridor was thinner, and that is what shifted in June.
Coca opened at 646 S. Broadway with tables of two and four, plans for both live music and DJs at a small stage in the front corner, and a family-and-friends soft open on June 5, 2026, with a regular opening after that. It is not built for large reservations, which tells you the format. Drop in, sit down, hear something loud enough to fill the room without shouting over it.
A few blocks off the main strip, Marquee on Broadway has been programming South Asian cultural nights on weekends, including the Omer e Rawan event on June 20, 2026. What that gives residents is a nighttime option that does not require a drive to Queens or Jericho. If you are a Hicksville homeowner who has spent the last five years driving into Flushing for late food and a show, the math has changed.
The summer calendar around the corridor
The food is the anchor, but the surrounding block has a real event footprint in warm months. A few things worth knowing if you are planning weekends between now and September:
- Broadway Commons Summer Carnival. The 2026 carnival ran across two weeks in May at Broadway Commons on North Broadway with free admission and parking, and unlimited-ride wristbands sold in advance. This is a walk-there event for a large share of the neighborhood.
- AutoMat Custom & Restoration 70th Anniversary Car Show on June 20, 2026 at 69 Hazel Street, one of those hyperlocal happenings you only find out about if you already live here.
- Fresh Mozzarella Making Class & Italian Dinner Experience at 1040 S. Broadway on July 15, 2026, which is the same corridor, just a different cuisine.
- Late-summer nights at Vitality Lounge on the calendar, including a July 11 disco and freestyle night. Not a food destination, but part of the reason the corridor stays lit past 10 p.m.
None of those individually is a headline. Together they are the reason the block does not empty out on Sundays.
The out-of-town-guest problem, solved
Every Hicksville homeowner eventually gets this text: "We're flying in Saturday, where should we eat." The old default was to drive people to Huntington or Roslyn. It is a fine answer. It is also a forty-minute round trip that erases the point of hosting people at your house.
South Broadway now solves the problem inside a walkable radius. For a first-time visitor from out of state, the tour looks something like this. Start with an afternoon coffee and something sweet somewhere on the strip. Do the early dinner sit-down at Diwan at 405 S. Broadway where the bar handles cocktails and the room fits a group. Walk two doors to Kababjees for a second course of karahi if the group is still hungry, which they will be. End the night at Coca at 646 if the group wants a drink and music. Total driving time inside that plan is zero.
That is a genuinely new capability for the neighborhood. Two years ago the same evening required at least one car ride and a reservation somewhere north of the LIE.
What this means if you have lived here a while
The reason to pay attention to the corridor is not that any single restaurant is life-changing. It is that a suburban half-mile now hosts the density of options you used to have to drive into the city for, and the openings keep coming. Food Street picked this block for its first New York location because the customer base was already here. Coca soft-opened four weeks later on the same street. A commercial landlord does not have to convince a national or regional operator to sign a Hicksville lease anymore. They come looking.
For homeowners, the practical effect shows up in small ways. Weekday dinner is a five-minute walk instead of a twenty-minute drive. Guests are easier to entertain. The block stays busy past ten, which changes how the neighborhood feels on a Wednesday. None of that shows up in a price-per-square-foot chart, but residents notice it, and buyers touring the area on a Saturday notice it too.
The next time someone tells you Hicksville is a commuter town with a train station and not much else, walk them from Punjabi Dhaba at 257 to Coca at 646 and let the block make the argument.
If you are curious what the demand around this corridor is doing to home values on the surrounding streets, or you have been thinking about what your own house would sell for in this market, Singh's Team tracks Hicksville block by block. Get your free home valuation and we will send you a straight read on where your property sits today.
