We pulled up next to the “Don’t Even Think of Parking Here” sign on West 37th Street. The plan was to sink our teeth into our chicken wings just before someone tapped on our window and told us to move. We’d been dying to try out E(at)=MC(hicken)2 for months, but the line has been 2 or 3 hours long every day since it opened a few weeks ago. Earlier this afternoon, I checked all four of their live-streaming apps to confirm there was a zero-minute wait to order. We both left work early to feed on this lucky, lucky day.
E(at)=MC(hicken)2 is a culinary miracle. They only serve the meat of chickens that pass an IQ test at cat-level sharpness. These are some very smart chickens. But in order to meet wing standards, the chickens must also pass an obstacle course fitness test, which includes a diving segment and a skeet shooting round. Eating such a well-developed chicken is not the tragedy it would seem because E(at)=MC(hicken)2 has established a college of sorts for underserved chickens. Chickens from all over the world apply for acceptance into the rigorous program and only the best graduate as poultry.
The rest of the restaurant’s ingredients are equally impressive. They only use produce grown under Antarctican ice for the first dirtless and thereby cleanest cultivation of lettuce and tomatoes in the world. Bread is baked daily on the premises using gluten and peanut free cheese flour. Side dishes include creamed baby parsnips, wilted mature daffodils (the poisonous lycorine and calcium oxalate crystals are naturally excreted), and fries. Sauces rotate weekly from onion mustard to spicy salsalito to garlic mojito and are made in the small batch test kitchens of indigenous saucemakers in Brooklyn. Desserts are not offered, but Coca-Cola fountain drinks wash down any meal.
E(at)=MC(hicken)2 is luxury fast food with Bugatti metrics. Upon entering the restaurant, a client is greeted by several Menu Handlers who each handle the same menu, printed in different sizes. The Menu Handlers are trained to estimate the size of a customer’s hand based on the width between the guest’s eyes. The visitor is then presented with the best-fitting menu for his or her hand, so as to review the restaurant’s offerings on one page without strain.
Then, there is an E(at) Concierge who leads the hungry consumer to one of many centralized kiosks, where the order is commissioned. At the buyer’s election, however, he or she can simply prick a finger and submit a DNA sample, by which the patented E(at)=MC(hicken)2 algorithm will design the best-suited meal for the glutton’s genetic composition. (You can pre-set a budget to keep costs reasonable.)
I don’t know much about the goings on of the kitchen because that stuff doesn’t interest me, but one person’s job is to stand perfectly in place, as a sort of mark by which all the others measure their movement. It is clockwork, to the extent there is such a static part in a clock. No one has ever waited more than 100 seconds for his or her meal.
Everyone has been abuzz over E(at)=MC(hicken)2 and I was starting to worry I’d never catch up with the hype. I’d heard everything about it and the only thing left was to taste it for myself. And here I was.
As I made my way across the street, I noticed a line snaking past the E(at)=MC(hicken)2 door and into the shop next door. I had to cut through the line to get to E(at)=MC(hicken)2 and my curiosity got the best of me.
“What’s this line for?” I asked a bandana-wearing lineman.
“It’s the newest sandwich shop in the city,” he said, “You haven’t heard of M_ORE?”
“No, I haven’t actually.”
“They serve regular tasting sandwiches, but the food is fortified with iron extracted from the only iron ore ever found at Vulcan Point, which is a tiny island located in a lake in the center of a volcano in the middle of a bigger lake in a Philippine island.”
“It looks closed.”
“It operates only in complete darkness, so as to not disturb the iron. It replicates the ore experience. Every employee is night-vision trained.” Apparently, there are tulips inside that are in full bloom all year round. They don’t need any sunlight because they are sufficiently fortified by the iron. Of course, only the employees can see them.
“Have you tried it yet?”
“No, this will be my first time, but they say not to try it until you are ready to change your diet permanently. The first guy who had M_ORE is in talks to be their spokesman. Like Jared & Subway, I guess. The guy’s whole life changed. He’s never felt stronger, more awake in his life. He had to quit Planet Fitness and join a hulk gym because he needed heavier weights to lift within days.”
“Wow.” I said as I made my way towards the automatic doors at E(at)=MC(hicken)2. “What’d you think of this place?” I asked my new foodie friend.
“It’s pretty good. Not worth waiting in line though, so good for you for waiting until the hype died.”
I sat with my greasy bag of chicken wings in my lap. I ruffled through it and picked out a fry just as a woman in coveralls and a shovel in hand tapped the car window and said, “You can’t stand here while you buff your fucking silverware, you know.”
At the bottom of the bag, there was a flyer showcasing rewards for returning E(at)=MC(hicken)2 patrons. There are varying levels of prestige, but the restaurant has not been open long enough to define the highest rewards. I bet it’s something lame like a free soda.
“Maybe we should find somewhere to put the car and stand in the M_ORE line,” I suggested. I wasn’t too hungry or tired to wait. Just walking by, I was shocked with M_ORE’s iron energy, even if only in the need to be fortified.