World of cuisines in Quincy

Lisa Luneau (center) and her daughter Isabel and husband Anthony dined with Jane Shiau at Little Q Hotpot on Hancock Street. (Photos by Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

When Iraqi born Hassan Alzubaidy found a site for his new Middle Eastern restaurant on Hancock Street in Quincy Center, he quickly discovered that his next door neighbor was a Brazilian restaurant. But these days that's not too surprising; it's hard to find a spot on Hancock Street's restaurant row where one national or ethnic cuisine isn't bumping up against another.

Across the street from Alzubaidy's Falafel King, Little Q Hotpot draws steady lunchtime and evening crowds. Down the street are two sushi bars, the high-end Mediterranean cuisine anchor Alba's, a few Irish pubs, a Thai restaurant, other Asian cuisines, and a traditional American food restaurant with an Irish name, Finian's.

It's good to be on a street with other restaurants, particularly other kinds of restaurants, Alzubaidy said, "because people want a change in their food." Quincy Center restaurateurs welcome what others might see as potential rivalry.

"When good restaurants get together, it makes everybody better," said manager Ming Zhu of Little Q, whose cuisine is based on the Mongolian tradition of cooking thinly sliced fresh ingredients in soup broths at your own table.

Jimmy Laing, co-owner of Hancock Street's Fuji 1546 Restaurant and Bar, a sushi restaurant with contemporary décor and the city's longest bar, agreed. "If you have more variety, it gives people more types of food to sample," Laing said. "If they come into Quincy Center one day to sample Alba's and see us, next time they will stop by. . . . The more diverse, the better."

In addition to Alba's, Laing cited the new pizza and sports bar style place called S6, and the Irish pub-style restaurant Holy Ground as examples of the street's synergistic range.

East meets West on Hancock Street, the city's promoters say.

"The great thing about the city is the variety of restaurants from Brazilian to Indian to Vietnamese to Japanese to America and chic new American," said Mark Carey, whose agency Discover Quincy joined with another city agency, Quincy 2000 Collaborative, to form the Quincy Restaurant League with the goal of marketing the city's restaurants as a package deal. He said the agency "looked at restaurants and wanted to create a tourism identity for them.

Quincy has more than 200 restaurants, about 70 of which have joined the league and are listed on its website, tastequincy.com. The league recently sent out 10,000 brochures in response to individual requests for information.

Carey, who not only boosts Quincy's restaurants but may be one of their best customers ("I don't cook for myself"), cites a varied list of city center favorites including Fat Cat (whose new American cuisine includes "lobster mac and cheese"), The Jury Room (a new steak place with an intriguing menu), Eatin' Healthy (a natural foods place), and Terra Brasilis, a Brazilian restaurant that has, Carey said, "a unique way of serving. They come to your table with grilled slices of beef."

Other notable Hancock Street establishments include Siam House, Taste of Taiwan, Blue 22 Bar & Grille, Bad Abbots, and Get Fresh, with its outdoor eating area near the Quincy Center T station. Side street neighbor The Four's, a restaurant and sports bar with a vast collect of sports memorabilia, also boasts a new outside area.

"Outside dining is beginning to crop up. Some restaurants have popped a deck out back," Carey said. Despite the price of gasoline and the national economic downturn, the city's restaurant business has continued to climb along with tourism, he said. While Americans may be driving less, Carey said, more international tourists are coming here because their money goes further.

And for regional diners who want to taste their way around the world, an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant is another reason to walk this way. The Falafel King, which borrows the name of the Boston restaurant owned by Alzubaidy's brother, combines authentic preparation, tangy flavoring, and fresh ingredients including halal meat. Prepared according to Islamic dietary codes, halal is equivalent to kosher, Alzubaidy said. And prices are low. "The kebab is $6.50," he pointed out.

Liang said the only business slowdown Fuji 1546 experiences is caused by the opening of the beach season, which each year lures some youthful customers to the seashore. But they soon come back to the city, he said. "When we say we have all these types of food here," said Carey, "it's authentic."

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com.