The film set fakeout catches Queens foodies off guard, resulting in culinary blue balls:

The opening of a new Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights may not raise eyebrows — that is, unless it does not actually serve food and its owner is “Daily Show” correspondent and actor Aasif Mandvi.

For several weeks, the Tandoori Palace has been open (and closed) for business along a busy strip of 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights as Mandvi and director David Kaplan (who shot the 2007 Sundance Film Festival entry “Year of the Fish”) filmed “7 to the Palace,” an independent Tandoori comedy in which the diverse neighborhood acts as a character.

. . .

Producer Lillian LaSalle said the film’s crew set up shop at neighborhood eatery Ashoka, at 74-14 37th Ave., one month ago, designing a sign for the film’s fictional restaurant and using local businesses as office space.

“If you’d drive by, you would see our awning,” she said. “The locals kept wanting to go into the restaurant and check it out, so we had to put a sign on the door that said, ‘This is not a restaurant, it’s a [movie] set.’ But we’ve been honored to shoot here. The business owners have been very enthusiastic and incredibly accommodating. On one day, I used a hair salon as my office and, in days prior, we set up in an Afghan kebab house.”

LaSalle, also Mandvi’s manager, said the film completed shooting the Jackson Heights scenes last weekend and would next film sequences at Bayside’s Fort Totten before wrapping in early August.