Kitchen Disasters

The New York Times talks to ten New York chefs about their worst kitchen disasters. Harold Dieterle recalls an expensive blown fuse: "A couple of years ago at Perilla, we were in the middle of dinner service on a Saturday night. It was around 8 o'clock, full dining room. An electrical microswitch shut-off short-circuited and cut all the gas to the entire restaurant. We ended up just comping everybody's meals and calling local restaurants to get them reservations. We lost between $7,000 and $10,000 that night — well over 100 reservations." [NYT]