The foolproof kitchen

When sitting down to write this article my mind immediately turned to a close shave I experienced some 40 years ago, attributable largely to my own incompetence but also to a few oversights when creating the workplace.

Before I get to the story let me own up to total ignorance of modern kitchen design, except to say that what I occasionally witness behind the scenes at our member hotels bears little resemblance to the places where I worked long ago. The standard of hygiene is incredible. There’s very little noise and staff are often in warm clothes with not a bead of sweat on the brow. And instead of endlessly walking back and forth, chefs have everything they need to hand.

I am no defender of petty bureaucracy and nor do I think the environmental health agencies always act fairly, but at least in part thanks to enforcement modern commercial kitchens have become much more pleasant to work in and, even more importantly, they produce safer food.

So, back to the incident. It was an unlikely set of circumstances. At the time I was assistant manager at a popular hotel & country club at Wittering near Chichester. Our chef was out of action for medical reasons and we had a large party booked for the evening, the local fire brigade and their guests, who were to enjoy a nice barbecue in the garden with music and drinks. At short notice I was therefore going to be in charge of the cooking.

Unfortunately the weather was against us so everything had to be moved indoors. No problem, we had an open-to-view “charcoal” grill in the restaurant with plenty of space to lay out all the steaks, sausages, burgers and chops. While this was happening the party gathered in the bar, leaving me to prepare the feast uninterrupted.

How smug I felt while setting meat onto the grill well in advance of the group being called in to eat. With the gas on medium it all seemed to be going perfectly, with a few cheeky little flames popping up between the various items as I turned them with my long metal tongues. This progressed alarmingly, however, as melting fat dripped onto the elements below and the flames grew taller. The heat also intensified so I was only able to make tentative picks with the tongues to avoid severe pain allowing the, by now, minor inferno to get the better of me.

The fire licked up the tiled wall and into the ventilation duct above. It was at this point I realised our incapacitated chef had been negligent because the whole apparatus was coated in grease. More flames appeared in the drip shelf above my head which I patted with a tea towel. This caught alight straight away so I threw it down to preserve my hand, failing to see that it had dropped onto a pile of paper plates which merely added to the spectacle.

It was time for drastic action so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a fire extinguisher. In no time I had the fire out and breathed a sigh of relief. Alas the food was ruined so I had to hastily assemble what I could find in the cold room and start all over again.

Once back under control and with food just about ready I asked a colleague to call the party in. “Oh, didn’t you know, Peter? They’ve rushed back to the station to get the fire engine. Apparently someone living down the road called to say they’d spotted smoke”.

By Peter Hancock, chief executive of Pride of Britain Hotels. This article first appeared in the September 2018 issue of Hotel Owner.