Often this website deals with the difficulties of navigating unfamiliar foodways when lack of fluency in a common language is a barrier. In New York this isn't simply a matter of translation to or from English; speakers of many languages must communicate with speakers of many others, and English is not always the key.
Spanish is another common transactional medium. At lunch one day at an Elmhurst restaurant, now closed, my waitress took my order in English, called it out to the kitchen in Bahasa Indonesia, then shouted downstairs to a stockboy in Spanish that was much more limber than mine. It's not that the neighborhood was lacking in young, able-bodied Indonesians (a gaggle of them took another table shortly thereafter), but they are comparatively few in number, with generally better prospects. To keep the wearying, lowest-paying positions filled, the Indonesian restaurateur — like many other immigrant businesspeople in New York — found the need to take up Spanish as a third language.
I don't know the lingua franca at Chang Pai, in Jamaica. Whatever language you may speak, however, the message of the sign is "Chinese," conveyed by the twin dragons that flank the name and by the typeface of the letters themselves. More specifically, the cuisine is halal Chinese and Thai, catering to a heterogeneous South Asian community, hence the subscript "Bangladeshi Indian Pakistani Chinese Style," written, respectively, in Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, and English. On the takeout menu, similar language interspersed with commas clarifies that this is not a hodgepodge but rather an accommodation of four different styles of cooking.
Except to note that the staff and customers all appeared to be South Asian, I didn't ascertain what languages are spoken at Chang Pai or how the various cooking styles may differ (if indeed they differ at all). I did gather, however, that though Thai cuisine is honored in name, Thai speakers seem to be out of luck.
Chang Pai
166-12 Hillside Ave. (Merrick Blvd.-168th St.), Jamaica, Queens
718-291-8222
www.ChangPaiChinese.com
