Ridgewood is in the chrysalis stage of an outer-borough transformation that shrieks “Brooklyn.” Except it’s not in that overhyped borough.

“Most people were like, ‘Queens? You’ve got to be kidding,’ ” said Brian Taylor, who is opening Onderdonk & Sons, a beer and burger joint on Onderdonk Avenue this month. He is an owner of the Pencil Factory, a popular bar that opened 14 years ago in Greenpoint, and now feels priced out of that neighborhood. “People are saying ‘Ridgewood, that’s the hottest place ever.’ ”

In a nod to Ridgewood’s burgeoning trendiness, some are even calling it “Quooklyn,” after a dining reporter for The New York Times coined the term in a June review of Houdini Pizza Laboratory. Though the term was met with derision and smirks (Gothamist.com joked that it was “ridiculous, because everyone knows it’s already Ridgewick”), it exemplified how this slab of Queens has been infused with Kings County DNA.

At first glance, Ridgewood appears an unlikely candidate for the next hot neighborhood.

Populated in the early 1900s by Germans employed at breweries and knitting mills, it later became a stronghold for Italians, Puerto Ricans, Poles and other Eastern European immigrants. Streets are quiet and leafy, lined by yellow brick homes with bay windows and porches spiked with American flags. And it’s distant: The local Myrtle-Wyckoff subway station is nine stops from Manhattan on the L train and seven stops along on the M line.