How To Clear A Room

In the late 80's there was enough disposable income around to float more fine dining than usual. Between corporate accounts and a plain old economic upswing, the two martini lunch and the two bottle dinner seemed invincible. A few great chefs emerged from this time period. A few really ordinary ones also rose to fame and recognition. Go figure, some are just really good at kissing media back side.

One figure who made a huge splash was in fact a really great chef. Many said a genius. The fatal flaw, and there almost always is one, was that he was the most disorganized worker I have ever seen. He was pretty scattered. One sous chef would actually keep her tongs, knife and personal equipment in a carpenters hammer holder to keep him from collecting every tool on the line during the slams. Its difficult to work an oven station without so much as a rag. As long as he didn't hold down an actual station, things were ok. Frantic, but we always got through it.

At the pinnacle of this guys career he was the Chef-Proprietor of a very exclusive, fine dining location which was reserved to the max 6 nights a week. One night, when the place was overbooked, Chef was working a station and expediting for some reason. As the ticket machine continued to spit out a crazy pile of paper orders, unsuspecting diners drank their cocktails and started their salads. Then the frazzled chef went where no chef wants to go...into the weeds. Several orders already on the board for a while, ended up being oversold. Which means angry wait staff had to go out with their tales between their legs and ask what else the diners would like after they had already been waiting for that item longer than appropriate. As the wait got longer and longer for food, the staff grew more and more uncomfortable. Once you get to that point, the customers can smell blood in the water. Diners begin questioning the wait and demanding service for their very high, although uncollected, tabs. The kitchen came to a dead stop. The chef slipped a cog.

One person had her head screwed squarely on. Kinda. The chef's wife realising that the restaurant's reputation would suffer miserably from this paralysis in the kitchen, did what any loving spouse would do for their counterpart. She pulled the fire alarm and cleared the building. Nothing stunts the animosity of an angry mob like fear of burning up in a fire.

I suppose if you are already looking at taking a loss on most of the checks in the dining room...you might as well save face. How much does the fire department charge for false alarms anyhow?