An Instant Crush Over Mashed Potatoes

The cardboard cup of mashed potatoes Gustavo Chagas Lopes handed Luke John Robinson III on Oct. 11, 2021, was not meant to be an aphrodisiac. But for Mr. Robinson, something in the way Mr. Lopes, then the manager of the Brooklyn restaurant Sally Roots, had passed them off was spellbinding.

“Gustavo is just so striking,” Mr. Robinson said. “He’s such a beautiful, beautiful man that when he reached across the bar to give me my order, I struggled to say, ‘My name is Luke and I’m here for a pickup.’”

That struggle was compounded by the reason he had ordered the grown-up equivalent of baby food in the first place: His mouth was killing him. On his way home from wisdom tooth surgery, “I was in a hell of a lot of pain,” he said. “And I was starving.”

Even so, the man who had captivated him with a cup of comfort food lingered in his thoughts. “I knew I wanted to know him more,” he said. “I knew it was destiny.”

Mr. Robinson, 28, of Ridgewood, Queens, is a sales representative at the pharmaceutical company Astellas. Mr. Lopes, 34, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is now a bartender at Yours Sincerely in Bushwick; he is also a freelance photographer. After the takeout exchange at the now-closed Sally Roots, Mr. Robinson found Mr. Lopes on Hinge, then followed him on Instagram. At the beginning of November, after a flurry of messages, they met for pizza at Ops in Bushwick.

In their messages, Mr. Robinson hadn’t mentioned the mashed potatoes encounter. When he brought it up at Ops, though, he was pleased to find that he wasn’t the only one who remembered. “Of course I remember you,” Mr. Lopes told him. He didn’t elaborate at the time on his first impression, which wasn’t as favorable as Mr. Robinson’s. “My first thought when I saw he had ordered just mashed potatoes was, ‘Who is this weirdo?’”