Post-wedding pancakes at iconic Chicago diner

     Nick Snow and Roxane Briones found each other on Hinge, the online dating site. Each liked what they saw, and decided to meet in person at Avec, the Mediterranean mainstay.
     But there are two Avecs. He went to the one in the West Loop. She went to River North.
     "I forgot he is new to the city," said Briones, who suggested the restaurant. "He went to the wrong one. I panicked."
     "I walked into the place, looking to meet, and there's no one there," said Snow.
     A phone call was made, an Uber grabbed, and the couple got together. Magic ensued.
     "We hit it off very quick," said Snow. "We joke, after our first date, we felt like we were dating a month. After a week, we felt it was a couple months. Now it feels like we've been together for years."
     Briones, 31, is a cook at Proxi, the coastal Asian place in the West Loop. Snow, 40, is a filmmaker who spent almost 20 years in Brooklyn before moving here last October.
     "It was time for a change," said Snow, who noted that Brooklyn was getting very expensive. "Try a new city for a little bit.''
     Briones had a bit of a head start, coming here from Michigan.
     "I came to Chicago almost three years ago," she said. "I was drawn to the restaurants, and the people that I admire work here. I just packed my bags and took a train. I didn't know anyone. Had to rent an apartment in Pilsen with two random girls, who turned into my best friends."
     The relationship, begun in misunderstanding, deepened by accident. Literally.
     "In February I was trying to teach her how to snowboard," said Snow. "She had never done that, coming from Nicaragua. I took her to the tiniest little hill in Naperville. I'm thinking, 'She's going to be fine. There's no way she can get hurt here.' She was doing pretty good, she was picking it up, and just fell forward, tried to catch herself and broke her wrist."
     "In two places," Briones added.
     Bad for a cook who spends her days chopping and stirring.
     "Her whole livelihood," said Snow. "She ended up living with me while she was recovering for two months. In a weird way, that really helped us. It launched us into this position where we were together every day and fire-tested the relationship. We hadn't been dating too long. Suddenly we're living together and together all the time. I'm caring for her. It feels so right. It didn't feel like a burden. That was a special sign."

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