"Stefen Ramirez hands me a plastic bag with ice cubes, his usual serious expression cracking into a grin. On the way over, I slammed head first into a small metal box sticking out of a streetlight. Has no one else done the same thing on the southeast corner of Avenue B and Second Street?! Ramirez fills my Japanese ceramic mug with more oolong, an inky batch from a recent research trip to the Wuyi Mountains in China. I drink in deeply, feeling some feels that have been eluding me for the last few years: the come-as-you-are comfort of being a restaurant regular." - ByElyse Inamine
