Watch The Fire!

"still in our party dresses we hugged each other and cried"

Our hearts and prayers go out to famed chef Alice Waters.  Chez Panisse had a fire yesterday and damaged the front porch of her iconic Berkeley restaurant  http://t.co/mRckawhTnE  She vowed to re-open the upstairs café next week while the downstairs dining area is being repaired.   Watching Ms. Waters’ tearful interview it made me recall our own traumatic restaurant fire experience.  

While celebrating the 3rd anniversary of our family business, our 1st restaurant burned down.  When we got the call that the restaurant was on fire we left our guest at the party, which we were hosting at Mom’s house and rushed down to the restaurant, still in our party dresses.  We watched as the firemen poured water on the charred, still smoldering remains of our dreams.  We hugged each other and cried.  

It was so unfair.  We had worked so hard.  We had worked for free for a long time, no pay, long hours and weekends.   We were young and Mom kept us busy (she said to keep us out of trouble) she meant away from the boys.  Which I never did understand because we were right next door to the East Bay Dragons Motorcycle club and it was raining men, especially on the weekends.   When visiting motorcycle clubs would come up and visit from LA, both sides of the block at 92nd and East 14th Street would be filled with nothing but motorcycles.  You could hear them coming from blocks away, hundreds of them roaring down East 14th Street.  Mama warned us that she better not catch us on any of them and we never did let her catch us.

Those memories went up in smoke.  Mama said it was no one’s fault but secretly we blamed our head cook at the time for burning down our restaurant, by not watching the fire in the brick pit.  You see the art of cooking in a big brick pit is to control the fire.  You control the fire with water.  We kept a water hose near the pit and a 5 gallon bucket of water that sat close to the bottom door of the brick pit.  The door was always open so you could monitor the fames and add more oak wood when needed, plus when it was cold you sat by the pit to stay warm.  A cup was used to dip water from the bucket and then douse the fire if it was burning to fast or getting too high.    

If you do not watch the fire sometimes it gets out of hand and can crawl up the walls of the brick pit, reach the meat cooking on the wire racks and shoot up the chimney.  You will hear an ominous roar; no cook want to hear that sound, because that means the whole pit has just caught on fire.  Once that happen you can do one of two things fight the fire or run and call 911.

To fight the fire the first thing you do slam the bottom door shut so that the fire is contained within the pit, grab the water hose stand off to the side, crack open the bottom door, the fire will rush out, you beat it back with the water hose and when it is safe spray water straight up into the pit.  You drench that sucker.  Then listen, if the roar of the fire has died down now you have to open the top doors, to kill the fire that is probably still on the meat burning it up or on the back wall, grab a towel first because the metal door handles will be hot.  

Mama told us that if the pit ever caught on fire that you save the restaurant; you can always buy some more meat.  The cook we left in charge of our restaurant that night while we had a party to celebrate our 3rd year in business chose to run and call 911.  By the time the fire department got there the fire had reached the roof and was spreading.  By the time we got there the restaurant was gone.  

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3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party

3rd year anniversary party