Vive la crepe!

[October 13, 2010]

Dear softrice fan:

Prima and I are advancing our secret plans today.  My morning mission finishes early at the Rockefeller Center, while Prima experiences delays due to unexpected proficiency tests.  The original plan was to lunch together, but she does not know when she will get out now.  To appease my hunger in the meantime, I decide to grab a quick bite at Korean Town.  I want something light, in case Prima comes out soon and we will happily go for desserts together.  With this in mind, I visit the mega popular Korean fried chicken power spot, KyoChon.

KyoChon
319 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
212.725.9292
www.kyochon.com

The trendy KyoChon near the heart of Manhattan is their dedicated effort to have a stake in the business capital of the world.  As with all Korean fried chicken restaurants, they prepare their fried chicken made to order, so it is a lengthy wait for my food.  Their marketing spin is that this is fresh food, but I notice how incredibly slow their cooks are in preparing various customer orders, from salads to brushing sauce on the chicken pieces.  Every other restaurant makes their food to order.  KyoChon is slow because their people are slow.  There is an efficiency improvement potential here.

When my buzzer lights up and shakes, I grab my small box of fried chicken wings upstairs to a hip bar and dining area.  I ordered the Signature Wings, double-fried in trans-fat-free canola oil to perfect crispiness, and then individually brushed with their signature soy garlic sauce for a light and even glaze that KyoChon originated.  These are the smallest Korean fried chicken wings that I have ever seen, which fits in with my need for a light snack, but are expensive for its little value.  They taste mediocre as a meal on its own, and inferior to what I had at Unidentified Flying Chickens and Mad for Chicken.

Food: D
Drinks: N/A
Dessert: N/A
Ambiance: D
Final: D

As I wait to hear news from Prima, the Wednesday Warrior in me decides to walk to Forbidden Planet at Union Square.  With time to spare, I buy my comic books and walk back to Chinatown.  At home, I update Omnipresence and read New Avengers #5 and the Thanos Imperative #5.  Both are the penultimate issues to their story arcs.  Will Doctor Strange be able to save Earth from the light demons of Agamotto?  Will the mad titan, Thanos, betray the Guardians of the Galaxy or save our universe from the deathless Cancerverse?  I will have to wait until next month to find out these answers, as Prima finally finishes her mission and calls me.

I meet my priestess at the Canal Street Train Station.  Prima has her suitcase with her, because she is staying with different friends on different nights.  My ex-president of the softrice fan club in Boston will have to meet up with the lucky friend to have her tonight after our reunion.  She is now the president of my fan club in Charlotte, temporarily, until her almighty return to Gotham.

Prima spreads her arms wide open and asks for a hug.  I gladly oblige and agree to a requested extension to our hugging session.  I am good hugging and good everything else too.  After my fall, I like having these tangible forms of caring.  Physical embrace is an easier form of realness and living in the present moment.  Yet something is wrong.  I miss hugging Angel.  I miss feeling that nothing in the world can go wrong.  Thank goodness for my world famous multitasking skills, because three different personalities have to plot my secret missions (to advance my future), restore my memory palace (to suppress my past), and play with Prima (to live in the present).

After some nice comfort hugging, Prima and I have to find somewhere to sit down and jabe.  I want her to take me to a faraway land, otherwise known as Kyotofu in Hell’s Kitchen, but Prima is tired from her secret mission of the day and does not want to go to a faraway land, especially with a luggage in tow.  I did quite a bit of walking myself today too, but I am always ready and energized for new adventures to share with lover.  Some consideration later, we decide to go to Nolita for Parisian crepes with ice cream!

Vive la crepe!
51 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
646.484.6897
www.vivelacrepe.fr

In the small creperie with a wooden ambiance, Prima transforms from a professional black dress to a comfortable grey sweater.  It is simply liberating to be with me.  She orders the oxymoronic Iced Hot Chocolate.  Prima cannot get over how a chocolate drink can be iced and hot at the same time.  I offer that it is a hot chocolate, but with ice.  Therefore, it becomes cold, she adds with a smirk.  Prima recalls the better oxymoronic frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3.  I agree, although I could care less about how the drink tastes, because the only thing outrageously divine is lover.  We went there on our first dessert date for the frozen hot chocolates.  I was in such a heavenly bliss that even the leaves she fed me (from her salad) tasted sweet.

From our cozy, circular table in front of the counter, Prima and I see the creperie workers freshly prepare our crepe.  They do so at the open takeout window, for the show and scent to attract people walking by the streets as well.  It makes business sense, while transporting a delicious French lifestyle to New York.  Prima and I have to have ice cream on our get-togethers, and nutella is the authenticity of European sweets, so we ordered the Nutella Vanilla Ice Cream Crepe to share.  I might have chosen a different ice cream flavor, but the cook said to trust him with this.  Without a stronger preference in mind, we went along with the vanilla ice cream.

Our Nutella Vanilla Ice Cream crepe arrives in a triangular casing, entrapping the ice cream from dripping out of the crepe (because it will as it melts).  Prima rips pieces of the fresh crepe to taste, while I scoop out the vanilla ice cream and nutella for her to enjoy the mix altogether.  The crepe is warm, along with the nutella, contrasting against the cold ice cream.  This is simultaneous culinary pleasure from both ends of the temperature spectrum.  I like crepes in general, and Vive La Crepe makes them as French as they can be.  (However, that will not prevent me from nudging lover to fly to Paris for our international crepe dates.)

To immortalize our fun times together, Prima takes the initiative to take pictures with me.  She even makes me hold the crepe like the statue of liberty holds her torch.  Once my priestess is back in her seat across from me, Prima tells me that she likes the tall blonde-haired woman next to us.  The woman has a certain glow to her is the simple reason.  I like blonde-haired women too.  Then again, I like all pretty girls in passing.  I do not discriminate.  Yet none of which glows on me as lover does, hence the difference between those I like and the one I love.

Food: N/A
Drinks: D+
Dessert: C
Ambiance: C
Final: C

Prima and I had very soon finished her hot iced chocolate and our nutella vanilla ice cream crepe, but we stayed and hogged the table for our chitchat.  Neither the creperie workers nor waiting customers pressured us to leave.  We simply did not want to hold others back from their crepe destiny any longer.  The two of us leave Vive La Crepe and walk from Nolita to Chinatown.

We make a stop in the midst of our stroll, after Prima remembered some phone calls she has to make.  The meetings she is scheduling will further advance her secret plan.  Prima is anxious to find a job in New York, move to Roosevelt Island, and see softrice every day.  Life does not get any better than this.

With uncontained excitement, Prima wants me to carry her.  I want someone to carry me too, which I am sure she can, by the way.  I tell Prima to jump on.  She actually does, much to my foolish surprise.  I carry her on my back and walk for a few steps up to the corner of the street, while pulling her luggage with us.  Out of safety concerns, I reason with Prima that we cannot cross the street like this, and she hops off her godly ride.

Prima notices that I am distracted and asks why I am uncomfortable.  She wonders if I am afraid of her doing something to embarrass me or draw attention to us.  Carrying a girl and walking down a crowded street does draw attention, for your information.  However, that is not the reason, for I do not care for how people see me and I do not worry about Prima judging me.

Three thoughts do come to mind.  The first two are light considerations, simply for certainty purposes.  What happens if my parents see us like this?  What happens if lover sees us?  I am not afraid of misunderstandings, but I have never thought about this.  I like knowing everything.  I say I do not care about how the world sees me, but the majority of the world sees me the way I want them to see me.  So much of softrice is deliberation, with pawns not knowing they are in my great game.  As for the possibility of someone in my social circle seeing Prima and me like this, I simply need to have the thought and think the possibility in my grasp.  Having this thought pulls me away from reality.  Prima notices it and over thinks herself.

The third thought weighs heavily on me and strains my mental abilities to hold myself together.  A scene flashes across my mind.  It is that of me carrying Angel, playfully going up and down the stairways at Pace University.  She was the first I carried.  We were happy then.  I was happy then.  I miss the feeling of happiness.  My memory dam is breaking.  I have been away from lover for too long, leaving my psyche much weakened.  Prima curiously notes my brief absentmindedness, while my concentration repairs the leaks in my mental state of being and reboots itself.

We continue our way towards my home.  Prima sniffs me, thinking I am wearing cologne.  It was someone else, walking pass us.  I smell deliciously divine, natural too.  Prima and I hug again, before I leave her with her friend.  We have big plans coming to fruition soon.  The day is sooner when we will enter the age of softrice!  The end of Avolution is only a beginning, the beginning of Axtinction.

Always in a puff of smoke,

softrice

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