As Zohram Mamdani leaves Queens for Upper East Side, a cool welcome awaits

In a matter of days, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will leave Astoria, Queens, the vibrant cultural and culinary hub he has represented for years, for Gracie Mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The new digs will be a dramatic upgrade. As for the neighborhood, it may take some serious getting used to for Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist.

If Astoria, a middle-class mashup of immigrants known for its leftist politics, was at the symbolic heart of his political movement, the Upper East Side is more like the headquarters of the opposition. The neighborhood is home to white-gloved door attendants and the city’s business elite, and its residents voted against him almost 2 to 1 in November.

One of them, Adam Beckerman, could barely contain his disgust for the incoming mayor’s views on Israel and capitalism as he walked his dogs on a recent frigid morning in the park that surrounds the mayoral mansion.

“He is an entitled, ignorant, anticapitalist, anti-Westernist ideologue,” said Beckerman, a 66-year-old businessperson. And if there was any doubt, he added, Mamdani ought not to expect any help getting oriented in the neighborhood.

“I’ve got no sandwich suggestions,” he said. “I’ve got my guard up.”

Mamdani has plenty of good reasons to make the move. Gracie Mansion, the home to mayors for generations, boasts 11,000 square feet of living and entertaining space, a spacious backyard perched over the East River and full-time security, all of which his 800-square-foot rent-stabilized apartment in Queens lacks.

But even as he announced his decision this month to move to Gracie with his wife, Rama Duwaji, he already sounded nostalgic about the place he was leaving behind.

The future mayor moved to Astoria in 2019, with aspirations to run for political office and an enthusiasm for the Egyptian, Greek and Latin American food carts, tea shops and restaurants lining its avenues. Those who live in the area closest to Mamdani’s apartment are slightly younger than the city average, with a median household income of $106,500.

“We will miss it all — the endless Adeni chai, the spirited conversations in Spanish, Arabic and every language in between, the aromas of seafood and shawarma drifting down the block,” he wrote in the statement announcing his move.

If the remarks read like a love letter to the neighborhood, the feeling was mutual. Last month, the politician won two-thirds of Astoria’s votes on his way to defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and Curtis Sliwa, a Republican

His future home is just across the narrow strait of the East River, but the cultural and political chasm could hardly be larger.

The Upper East Side is among the city’s most affluent and expensive neighborhoods, where multimillion-dollar town houses are the norm and Italian and French restaurants are the preferred local dining destinations. Around 7 in 10 residents are white, and the median age is a few years older than the city as a whole. A majority of households, or 63%, are still renters, but fewer than in Mamdani’s old neighborhood, where 87% were.

Cuomo won the neighborhood by a 24-point margin, though his victory was narrower in its Yorkville section, the blocks between Third Avenue and the East River, where Gracie is situated. Mamdani even won some precincts there.

“I don’t think anyone would be unwelcoming to his face,” said Carly Etzin, 29, who lives up the block. “But if you look at the breakdown of voting, this was one of the only neighborhoods that voted against him.”

Mamdani, who grew up in Uganda and Morningside Heights on the west side of Manhattan, confessed recently he had not spent much time in the part of town he will soon live in, but he suggested he was curious to learn more.

“I can tell you that some of my favorite memories in this city are also visiting the many museums that we have on Museum Mile, and I know that’s not too far from Gracie Mansion,” he said.

The more immediate area around Yorkville — about a mile from the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim and other art museums — is better known as a quiet place to raise a family than a bustling cultural destination, though. Once a retreat for the city’s wealthy, it can still feel a world away from the frenetic energy of Midtown.

On a recent morning, Carl Schurz Park, the gemlike green space that surrounds Gracie at the neighborhood’s far eastern edge, was empty save for a lone woman doing tai chi and a few dog walkers. The wind ripping off the East River only heightened the silence around the mansion.

While Yorkville’s days as a German and Hungarian enclave are long gone, a handful of culinary landmarks remain that might attract the attention of a politician who prides himself on probing the city’s cuisine: The butcher Schaller & Weber, Heidelberg Restaurant and the Budapest Café are among locals’ favorites. The arrival of the Second Avenue Q line in 2017 helped spur a flurry of high-rise development.

“If you look in the right places, there’s definitely cool vibes,” said David Hassell, the general manager at Schaller & Weber, which has been owned by the same family since the 1930s.

Mamdani’s predecessors have surveyed the sleepy environs and, more often than not, pointed their chauffeured SUVs elsewhere at night. Mayor Eric Adams favored Osteria La Baia in Midtown for dinner and downtown nightclubs like Zero Bond. Rudy Giuliani liked cigar bars between City Hall and Gracie. Bill de Blasio famously left the neighborhood even to exercise at the Park Slope YMCA in Brooklyn.

Still, the first couple may find some more familiar comforts to fight off homesickness, if they look hard enough.

The restaurateur Abdul Elenani, who has hosted Mamdani at his establishments, opened an outpost of his Palestinian restaurant, Al Badawi, three blocks from Gracie earlier this year.

Hanifa Abbasi, a spokesperson for the restaurant group, said they hoped it might become a go-to takeout spot for Mamdani and Duwaji.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to, like, cater for him and bring that spice that he needs to his life,” she said. “He’s a spicy man.”

And if all else fails, Mamdani need only walk out to Gracie’s back porch, where on a clear day it is possible to take in his beloved Astoria just across the East River.