NORFOLK — Tasty food, coffee and a friendly atmosphere are drawing people to the ICBX, a new café offering breakfast and lunch.
The ICBX, so named in honor of Norfolk being known as the Icebox of Connecticut, opened on Monday, Dec. 2, after many delays in the installation of an exhaust system.
“Something you’d think would take two weeks, ends up taking three months,” café co-owner Peter Crippen said. In this case it took much longer than three months, closer to two years. He said the bigger companies kept pushing back the job in favor of bigger jobs. Finally, using local contractors was the key and the work was done more quickly.
Marinelle Crippen, Peter’s wife and partner in the business, works at the counter greeting customers and taking orders while Peter is in the kitchen cooking.
“Things have been going very well,” Peter said. “We get busy, we handle it and learn each day how to refine the flow from everything for customer service to food preparation.” Marinelle agreed, saying, “It’s been fun so far.”
The Crippens are not strangers to working with food. They bring their experience running Rex Café in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, managing the Mermaid Inn in Chelsea and Red Rooster in Harlem, to the ICBX.
Peter Crippen, owner of the ICBX cafe at Station Place in Norfolk, prepares to cook a made to order omelet. ICBX opened on December 2nd. Peter and his wife Marinelle run the cafe together and offer breakfast and lunch from 7a.m. to 2p.m., everyday except Tuesday. Robin Roraback
In addition, Peter’s mother makes Mrs. Crippen’s Bourbon and Molasses Fruitcake, which is available at ICBX. His sister ran Irving Farm Coffee House in Millerton, New York, for many years. When Peter and son Rex went on a fishing trip recently, his sister filled in at the grill.
“It is amazing how the Breakfast Burritos have gone over.” Peter remarked. He also said that he has brought back something he remembers from childhood: toasted muffins. He said that once customers have a toasted muffin “it is the only way to eat it.”
David Gourley of Norfolk has quickly become a regular customer. He sat at the counter, chatting with Marinelle. “It’s a wonderful meeting place and a welcome addition to our community,” he said. Of his made to order three egg omelet, he said, “The tomatoes are warmed on the grill first. Delicious.”
ICBX offers coffee, tea, biscuit sliders, oatmeal, yogurt and granola. Breakfast sandwiches can be made to order with a choice of sausage, ham, egg, avocado, bacon, tomato and cheese. Breakfast Chorizo Burritos have options of onion, egg and hot sauce. Vegetable Burritos can be made with green peppers, mushrooms, black beans, egg and hot sauce.
A variety of baked goods is also available, including scones, breads and muffins.
Starting Thursday, Jan. 2, the café began offering lunch. The lunch menu contains two sandwiches, soup and salad.
In December they were open every day except Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and in January extended the hours until 2 p.m. For more information, call (860) 671-0005 or stop by the ICBX at 10 Station Place in Norfolk.
Fierce action from both teams commenced right from the opening face-off, and it looked to be an equal battle. Dakota Boyle and Ainsley Moffitt scored quickly for Kent giving them a 2-0 lead after only six minutes.
Kent's Ainsley Moffitt takes a shot against the Millbrook goalie.Photo by Lans Christensen
The second period started, again with fast but equal aggression from both teams. The Millbrook and Kent goalies were sharp, turning away chance after chance for the bulk of the period.
Millbrook’s Brooke Ness found the net near the end of the second period, as did Lily Kennedy and the game was tied 2-2.
Lily Kennedy on attack for Millbrook.Photo by Lans Christensen.
Excitement grew throughout the contest and the final period started with high hopes from both teams and fans. The two sides traded goals, only adding to the drama.
The deciding moment came when Kent's Abby Roberson scored the game-winning goal, securing a tough but deserved 4-3 victory for Kent.
Kent's record advanced to 7-12-1 and Millbrook moved to 6-10-3.
Ainsley Moffitt celebrates after scoring a goal for Kent.Photo by Lans Christensen
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Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens at home in front of one of Plagens’s paintings.
“He was doing critiques with everyone,” Fendrich said of Plagens. “We met at one of those sessions and, well, what can I say. We fell in love instantly.”
Fendrich speaks candidly about the pressures that shaped her early life choices. “We both married the first time at 21, which a good number of women of my generation did without much thought.” Her first husband was a good guy, she says, but “we weren’t suited for each other at all, even though he suited my parents perfectly.” Her decision to get a divorce was seismic. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a year.” Time softened the rupture. “One day she told me, ‘I see now why you left.’”
Fendrich had a rigorous liberal arts education at Mount Holyoke. “I studied painting and drawing, but I also got interested in political philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli — Rousseau was my big guy — Tocqueville, everybody. And I still read them.” Plagens’s path was less formal. “I went to USC at 17,” he said, “and declared English as my major. It was a frat school, and I was in one for the first two years. Then I started doing the cartoons for the Daily Trojan, took a couple art classes, and thought, ‘Wait a minute, I like this.’”
Culturally, they diverged just as sharply. “I came from a fairly puritanical family that didn’t even go to the movies,” Fendrich said. Plagens, by contrast, grew up immersed in pop culture. “My father was an omnivorous reader,” he said, “and a jazz fan, and he shared these passions with me.” In 1966, Plagens walked into Artforum’s LA office and said, “I want to write reviews.” He was paid five dollars per piece. “Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon, so it went a long way.”
Over time, the couple slowly fused their educations. “He taught me jazz, I taught him Mozart,” Fendrich said with a laugh. “I’ve had a movie education from him; he read Jane Austen because of me.”
Plagens and Fendrich at home in front of some of Fendrich’s paintings. Natalia Zukerman
During their early years in LA, Plagens taught at USC, and Fendrich at Art Center College of Design. In 1985, they decided “our kind of abstraction would do better in New York,” as Fendrich put it. “So, we up and moved to Tribeca with $10,000 and a toddler.”
Both artists grounded their artistic careers in teaching and writing. “Teaching, which I loved, gave me the financial stability to be an artist,” Fendrich said, reflecting on her 27 years as a professor at Hofstra. “It meant that being an artist didn’t require I make money from every show. I didn’t start writing until 1999, but though I write for publication frequently, I make hardly any money at it.”
Artistically, they guard each other’s independence. “We have unspoken rules,” Plagens said. “You don’t comment on someone’s work while they’re in the middle of creating it.” Critique comes by invitation only. “He’s not mean, just direct,” said Fendrich. Over time, their aesthetics have subtly converged. “My work has gotten cleaner from looking at his,” she said. “He’s gotten more colorful because of me.”
The two have had several two-person exhibitions. At a recent duo show at the Texas Gallery in Houston “Laurie’s paintings flew off the wall,” Plagens recalled. “Me, well, not so much.”
Plagens’s parallel career in journalism shaped their lives in tangible ways. He worked as art critic at Newsweek from 1989 until 2003 and currently contributes reviews of museum exhibitions to The Wall Street Journal. “Being at Newsweek was one of the luckiest breaks I ever had,” he said. “They paid me to see things I would gladly pay to see.”
Their creative processes mirror their personalities. “I start with a specific idea,” Fendrich said, “and then modify things as I paint.” Plagens laughed. “I start with complete mush, just blurting it out and spending the rest of the time fixing it.”
In 2019, they made what Fendrich calls “a decision of contraction.” They left the TriBeCa loft they had lived in for three decades, sold their Catskills home with its large studio, and moved full-time to a former auto repair shop in Lakeville, now a house where each has a studio, and the ground floor retains the open feel of a loft.
What sustains them in life, art and love, decades in, are endless conversations — and arguments — about art, history, exhibitions, books and movies. That exchange, ongoing and rigorous, may just be the masterpiece of their shared life.
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