The Malaysian Insider :: Food
The Malaysian Insider :: Food |
| In the mood for love… letters! Posted: 11 Sep 2012 05:26 PM PDT  Mint plant and coffee ice-cube. — Pictures by CK Lim and Kenny Mah We've brought a couple of your colleagues to Typica Café, a favourite haunt of ours, for some coffee and conversation.
Tiny pots of mint and young coffee plants sit in a row by the window. The smell of freshly brewed coffee is in the air. And your colleagues, being the curious creatures that they are, inspect every corner of the café, from the long wooden benches made from a couple of rescued Chinese medicine shop signboards to trying every seat at every table available. That's when one of them discovers the old school desk, the sort with a lid on top.  Coffee and love letter. So she lifts up the lid of the desk and we look at its contents. No orderly stacks of financial records. In fact, it is all empty but for a couple of sheets of paper. One is pale white with English text. The other is yellowing around the edges, filled with tiny Chinese characters. Both are handwritten. "Are these letters?" you ask. "Maybe they are. I don't think we should read them though. They may be private." "Let's ask the girls whose these are. Maybe someone left them there by mistake. Maybe there's a contact number." Good idea. And so we ask the girls behind the bar if they knew about these letters. Kai Yin the manager smiles: "So you've found the love letters?" Love letters? "Yes, love letters. They are probably left by our customers. Some use the desk to exchange love letters," says the siphonist Mei Ying. She goes on to tell us how this all started: "We used to have a customer, a young guy, who had a crush on another customer who was his college mate. "She used to sit at that particular desk because she liked how small and solitary it was. Just perfect for two. But she sat alone. "Now, this guy has wanted to confess his feelings to her for quite a while now but couldn't muster up the courage to do so. "Finally one day he came to us for help. He came up with the idea of putting down the feelings he wanted to share with her in a letter and asked if he could hide the letter in the desk.  Lifting the lid. "So the girl found the love letter?" you ask. "Actually, no. True, she did keep returning to the same desk to sit and have her coffee. "It just never occurred to any of us that she wouldn't be curious enough to open the lid and check what's inside the desk. "The poor boy never dared to tell her so he kept suffering in silence. "Finally, we couldn't take it anymore and suggested that she take a peek. Only then did she find the love letter and read it!" "That's so sweet. Did they get together in the end?" I ask. The girls smile wryly at us. It's another one of those bartender-type secrets that they will only spill if we order more drinks, or in this case, more coffee perhaps.  Love letters in the desk. We were supposed to catch a movie before retiring to bed but you tell me you don't feel like watching one. You've had a change of mind; you think coffee would be nice. "How about Typica?" you ask. I smile and say "Sure." We don't come here often in the evenings but when we do, it's a completely different place. The streets of Pudu are dark and quiet. Nepalese workers returning from a day's labour chat quietly, walking hand in hand. The yellow glow of the street lamps lends a romantic tone to the café at night. You love flowers and so you're snapping yet another photograph of the latest blossoms sitting in an assortment of glass bottles filled with water. You are hovering over the love letters desk (as we've come to call it) so I suggest you check to see if there are any new letters.  The café girls: Kai Yin the manager (top) and Mei Ying the siphonist. But instead of taking it up to read, you start taking pictures of it. Minutes pass like hours. The girls behind the bar sneak a look at me. I give a pained look of exasperation back. This could take months. "Wait a minute," you finally say, "is this letter for me?" I calmly reply, "You are really slow, you know that?" The entire café breaks into laughter. Everyone is in on it, you see. I had come by earlier that day and left a handwritten letter with the girls' full blessing, and anticipation. You see, they had finally told us what happened to the first love letter couple. No happy ending, unfortunately. The girl appreciated the gesture, but there was no spark. Ink and paper is no guarantee of affection or reciprocation. A few months after that, the boy left overseas for work.  In the mood for love. As strands of Rebecca Pan's "Bengawan Solo" serenade us, we sip our coffee. You are reading my love letter to you for the umpteenth time, smiling into your cup. The future, as ever, remains unknown, but here and now we are pretty happy together. And we don't need ink and paper to prove that. Typica Café, GL-08, Ground Floor, Shaw Parade Plaza, Changkat Thambi Dollah, 55100 Kuala Lumpur (Tel: 03-2145 032811). Business hours: 11am to 9pm Sundays - Thursdays; 11am to 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays; closed on Wednesdays. http://typicacafe.blogspot.com * Kenny writes and delivers love letters by hand. (Actual ink and paper are usually involved.) Read more of his musings on life and love at http://lifeforbeginners.com |
| Erotic cooking classes and food porn inspired by ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Posted: 11 Sep 2012 04:38 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, Sept 12 — As the erotic series Fifty Shades of Grey — often referred to as 'Mommy Porn' — continues to enjoy worldwide popularity, fans and foodies are coming up with tantalising — and titillating — ways to indulge their libidinous appetites. From Fifty Shades of Grey-themed parties and menu ideas to cooking classes, the fastest-selling book of all time in Britain is steaming things up in the kitchen.  The wildly popular 'Fifty Shades of Grey' series is spawning bondage-themed cooking classes and party ideas. — Picture courtesy of ©AVprophoto/shutterstock.com Alongside scenes of bondage and sadomasochism, food plays a subtle catalyst to Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey's deepening sexual relationship, as the couple indulges in the secondary pleasure with decadent foods. From predictable aphrodisiacs like oysters, wine, champagne and fresh strawberries, to high-brow meals like Beef Wellington, venison and duck with cherries, food often acts as a prelude or post-coital treat — a detail that fans and entrepreneurs alike are jumping on. The Cooking Channel offers a variety of menu ideas for a Fifty Shades of Grey-themed party or intimate dinner for two, with suggestions like Bratwurst — not because it's mentioned in the books, but for the 'visuals' — and vanilla, for Grey's refusal to engage in "vanilla sex". Foodily.com also offers recipe ideas using known aphrodisiacs with a menu that starts with a vanilla bean cocktail, oysters, a basil, fig and honey salad, and ends with chocolate and strawberries. Fans have likewise been adding photos to a Pinterest page of 'food porn' chronicling all the dishes mentioned throughout the trilogy with fastidious detail, including specific wine varieties — Pouilly Fumé — and Twinings tea. And trend-tracking site BuzzFeed also collected photos of Fifty Shades of Grey-themed desserts that include a layered cake in differing grey hues and tie-cookies. — AFP-Relaxnews |
Nat King Cole croons in his sly timbre, Quizás, Quizás, Quizás. Sunlight fills the café with a gentle warmth.| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Food To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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