It is time to praise the Bangladeshi steam table, with its crammed bins, trays, casserole dishes and china bowls; its stacks of cilantro-flecked kebabs as long as hot dogs; its rolling mountains of rice in sepia and saffron, studded with whole peeled hard-boiled eggs and looking ready to tumble.

Such is the vision of food without end that greets you at Boishakhi in Astoria, Queens, which was among the first neighborhoods settled by Bangladeshi immigrants starting in the 1970s. For decades, the city’s Bangladeshi restaurants were nearly indistinguishable from more blurrily subcontinental ones, kitchens churning out chicken tikka masala and murky thatches of saag paneer. Here, a half-block from Masjid el-Ber, the local mosque, the flavors are distinct to the Bay of Bengal.

What I craved most was shutki vorta, a rough crush of little dried fish that start out as hard and skinny as licorice and are broken down just enough to grow soft and slightly fluffy. It’s a small, briny cloud, with swift jabs of chile and a leavening bite of cilantro, that tastes as much of the sun as of the depths.

There is fresh fish, too, above all hilsa, which lives in the sea but breeds in rivers and is said to taste best when caught in freshwater. Oily and rich like shad, it is the fish of weddings and meals for heads of state, and eaten at breakfast on Pohela Boishakh, Bengali New Year’s Day. (The restaurant’s name is a salute to the New Year’s spirit of celebration.)