"I Do?" They Will. (Sometime.)
Since opening her original Flour Bakery, Joanne Chang has consistently impressed upon the staff her philosophy of making customers feel at home. To stress the point, she says, she almost has to get over-the-top hokey about it.
"But you are hokey," her fiance, Christopher Myers, teases.
Her goshes and good griefs are endlessly amusing to Myers, whose irreverence comes through loud and clear in the motto on the restaurateurs' Myspace page: "Rock out with your wok out!" But if Chang is undeniably old-fashioned, she doesn't need something as conventional as a marriage certificate to validate the home they have made together. Still, friends are forever asking: When is the wedding? Engaged three years ago in Paris - under the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve, no less - they nearly pulled the trigger in March, on a whim. With Myers's 50th birthday approaching, Chang asked him what he wanted.
"How about we get married?" he said, only half-kidding.
But with that deadline come and gone, now they're shooting for Chang's birthday in the summer. (She'll be 39.) Whenever it happens, they'll be traveling light. They've discussed an island getaway with their closest friends, Esti Parsons and her husband, Drew, bassist in the rock group American Hi-Fi. "I've offered to become a minister," Parsons says. They've even threatened to jet off to one of those Elvis wedding chapels in Vegas. For now, however, they are supremely content putting their matrimonial energies into their namesake business.
