Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Kitchen Battles



The heavy steel frying pan was hurtling toward me at high speed and whizzed by my head missing me by a hair, crashing into the wall. I ducked under a prep table, watching in disbelief as one of the battling women, shrieking like a banshee slammed a huge pot against her enemies head. Blood poured down her face but she didn't waiver. Handfuls of hair were flying as they ripped at each others heads; the noise was deafening as plates and pots were thrown or knocked to the floor. One of the women fell with her angry face turned toward me. She looked insane with eyes agog and a stream of curses interspersing her screams. Shock and terror seemed to freeze the few people in the kitchen. The male photographer I was working with leaped on a table and shrieked along with the women. Finally somebody called the police and the women were taken away. We were up to our ankles in food, broken glass, pots, pans and adrenalin. One of the more memorable kitchen moments in my past.

During my food career,  I spent more than my share of time in various kitchens large and small:  hotel kitchens, test kitchens, food labs, pilot plants, manufacturing kitchens. They share one very important element - high energy. Anyone who has ever worked "on the line" in a restaurant knows the drill. You stand around doing prep work and side work, a few customers drift in but then the "big busy" hits and everyone gets into their groove. It's a feeling I've always loved - the urgency, the working together as a team and then the satisfaction of making it through alive. 

Sometimes the high energy goes wrong.  The kitchen battle I got caught in took place in New Orleans. I was at a Denny's working on an operations manual for their regional kitchens. There was never a dull moment. The cook we'd been working with for weeks was stabbed to death in a poker game the night before. It turned out he was heavily involved with two of the women working in the restaurant; they discovered his murder and his two-timing on the same morning and went berserk. Our recipe that day was one part grief, two parts shock and ten parts jealousy. The finished product was a disaster.

I crawled out from under the table; the photographer retrieved his battle-torn equipment-broken lights, broken camera, pranged tripods - everything was wrecked. I left the restaurant, checked out of my hotel and fled the scene of the crime, returning reluctantly after a month or so when things had cooled off.

My kitchen experiences, while rarely battlegrounds of this magnitude, were usually steamy, chaotic, lively affairs far removed from the dispassionate, sterile Queens' kitchen at Windsor Castle (1878), pictured for Sepia Saturday this week. I'll give you this though.....the place looks safe.


14 comments:

  1. OMG what a story. When I first started reading it, I thought it was one of your fictionalized stories. But then I read on and I find that it really happened. Unbelievable. I can see why you hot footed it out of that place.
    You know, you should really write a book about your kitchen and cooking experiences and throw in a little of your travel adventures. Maybe call it "Reservations" or...
    Nancy

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  2. Ahahah! :D So funny! New Orleans seems very far from Windsor Castle and English people!

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  3. Oh my gosh! That is crazy. You are an excellent storyteller ... and the best stories come from real life. Glad you made it out of there safely.

    I enjoyed being a part of the restaurant crew, though I never was a cook ... I was hostess/cashier and waitress for several years though. You do become part of another family, but dang, that cook was taking a lot of chances before he died.

    Thank you for all the nice things you wrote in your comment on my blog!

    Kathy M.

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  4. OK, you win. I don't think any of us can top your SS kitchen story!

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  5. Yes that was an enthralling story. I also thought it was fiction but how amazing all the things you have been into. Great post.
    QMM

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  6. Wow! Glad I missed that restaurant on that day!!

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  7. Good gracious : I would have never imagined that such a placid old picture could have involved such violent and dramatic memories. But who knows, maybe those Windsor Castle kitchens were also a hotbed of anger and jealousy.

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  8. What an experience to have. Guess it must have been scary at the time. It's a good thing that we don't always know what goes on in the kitchen.

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  9. Amazing! I had no idea such an innocent picture could result in such a memory!

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  10. Oh my such intense writing can only come from within the walls and memory of such a highly intense job as working in the food industry..I too know this well! I must laugh though at the turn of the intensity to include even murder and lust and everything that could go wrong does! Great stuff!

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  11. Thought your story was fiction until I read on to the end! It's a good thing you didn't get hit with the frying pan. You were smart to leave town and not return until tempers settled down.

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  12. At a Denny's you say? That explains some of the meals I remember. I now prefer restaurants where I can see the kitchen.

    Author Barbara Ehrenreich had an interesting chapter in Nickel and Dimed about working at a Denny's.

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  13. Oh my goodness, tragedy (and two-timing) turned into a hysterical story as it often does in life. You have a great knack for telling stories - thanks for sharing!

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