Ike is bald. he almost looks like a human in a igloo costume. He has bushy brows like Alladin's Jeanie and a goatie that stands out along with his eyebrows and smile. Ike has a personality. He is someone that someone like me cannot not notice. Why would someone like me notice him? Because of the wordage he uses. He runs a sandwich place across the street, and as finicky as I am with trying new foods, he froze me in tracks. Cause the hoarding to his business reads - Ike's love and sandwiches. The sucker for love and sandwiches that I am, I had to gingerly step out of my finicky eater tag and walk right in. The menu on the wall reads like fine fiction, and the sucker for quirk falls flat already, sight unseen of the wares. Though it is only fair to add that Ike didn't disappoint me with his culinary creations.
I predicted to be a regular at that place, but given my attention span, I did kind of not go back up until last week. It is a record of sorts that I decide to try a fried chicken sandwich the last time I was there. This borderline vegan for life makes the knee jerk decision out of a whim to try what? Fried chicken for love of the holy spirit. We went in and ordered our entrees. The first born refused to budge and got her Murray school house eggplant sandwich and I, still feeling as brave as I did a while ago, went ahead and placed my order for the, drumm roll - fried chicken sandwich. Ike had a lovely name for it - He called it James and the Giant peach. He dressed it with barbecue sauce and some sort of cheddar. Gourmet already - and it somehow felt like it was severed with a generous side of inspiration.
When I took a bite, I tried all I could to be in the moment and let each and every layer of that yumminess burst on my taste buds. The barbecue sauce had a smokey flavor that I could have done without, but the fried chicken? It tasted bland. Like nothing. I carefully peeled the sandwich apart to look at the nugget. It was there alright. Looking just like one of the nuggets my nephew used to gobble up one after the other. But out of nowhere I had inspiration hit me like a wall of bricks. I wish I listened to my inner voice and made some memos to ponder upon those flashes of wisdom, but I hope it'll all come back again, when I stay still and be present. Suddenly I was missing my laptop. In that very instant, I'd have churned up some great tidbits of gyaan - but here I am , hours later, after attending to the monotonous and the mundane, to purge out the urge to type.
Fried chicken. Consumed by a confirmed, bonafide, finicky, 'I'll ask you so many questions about the broth that you'd question your own trust in your vegetable soup' dissecting vegetarian. Did I tell you Ike is full of personality? He somehow inspired me, for the first time in for ever - and literally for ever - to taste poultry. And why not? When he recreated it in an all vegan glory!
Post script - I'd heard about numerous vegan places that serve vegan meat dishes - but I'd never ever budged to try them. Call it folly, skepticism or plain old snobbish, but let me grant it to Ike for pushing me over the edge.
For now that is a huge leap. A rebellion of sorts. To try a dish that could be crafted out of soy but comes with 'chicken' in the moniker. I think I get negotiable once in a while, specially when the likes of Ike serenade me with a personality, the right words and plenty of imagination.
