The recipes for disaster

Every chef has a tale of things gone awry, a kitchen incident they would rather forget. But when asked, most chefs have no hesitation recounting their difficult moments on the job.

Lights out

Peter Gilmore immediately thinks of the time four or five years ago, when the power went out at Quay restaurant. ''A fire alarm went off downstairs - at Wildfire, would you believe. The whole [Overseas Passenger] Terminal got shut down in the middle of service. We thought, do we cook by candlelight or tell the customers they have to leave?'' In the end, without lights or extractor fans working in the kitchen, the difficult decision to shut the service was made. ''We had gone around and told half the restaurant they had to go - they were just getting up when the power came back on,'' Gilmore says. ''Everyone sat back down and we started cooking again. That was an unusual night, that's for sure.''

Get me to the bride on time

The chef and former owner of Bird Cow Fish in Surry Hills, Alex Herbert, recalls a memorable mistake. ''I had to make a wedding cake but I got the time wrong. I had it all ready to go, then went to lunch at Bistro Moncur. I got to Darling Harbour afterwards with the cake, to be told the wedding party had left an hour ago by boat. We had to do a boat-to-boat transfer in the middle of the harbour to get the cake to them. It made me understand why brides are neurotic.''

Melting moment

Another cake-disaster story comes from the chef and owner at Ormeggio at the Spit and Spiedo at Westfield Sydney, Alessandro Pavoni, when a croquembouche was brought to Ormeggio by a wedding party on a hot day. ''When it was time to serve it, the sugar had melted, it had fallen apart,'' Pavoni says. ''We put it back together quickly - it didn't look exactly the same, but we improvised.'' Like any chef, he's seen a fair few kitchen calamities: ''When I was younger, in Italy, working in a kitchen, a pastry chef was doing the bread and got his arm stuck in the dough mixer. It dislocated his shoulder, we had to rush him to the hospital and close the kitchen. Another chef slipped on the floor and put his hand in the deep fryer.''

Show some respect

When Martin Boetz of Longrain, Surry Hills and Melbourne, started work at Darley Street Thai, he was making a sweet fish sauce, with caramelised palm sugar, when disaster struck. ''I was straining it into a canister but unfortunately I poured it all over my hand. I had to sit down for a moment because I felt nauseous. I put some gauze on my hand because it had started to blister. Then I had to work on the main course - I had to deep-fry betel leaves in a batter, which is notorious for spitting - and it spat on my face. I just screamed: 'Oh, f---.' I had to continue on with the service, looking like someone had butted out cigarettes on my face. That's how I got respect at Darley Street Thai.''

Grilled finger anyone?

Dave Campbell of the Hungry Duck in Berry recalls, during his time as an apprentice, one of his co-workers slipped and cut the tip off his finger. ''It wouldn't stop bleeding and no Band-Aid would stick to it. With orders building up, he started to panic. With sheer courage and determination, he stuck his finger on the side of the grill and sealed it until it stopped bleeding. With a slight yelp and a tear in the eye, service continued. He went to the doctor the next day,'' Campbell says.

When the knives are out

Chris Low of Orto Trading Co, Surry Hills, also returns to his early days in the kitchen. ''When I was an apprentice in the north of Scotland, I pulled a knife off a magnetic strip on the wall, and the entire knife strip and 10 knives detached and flew off the wall,'' he says. ''I got five serious slashes on my wrist. I tried to be tough and not call for help but the next thing I knew I was being picked up by the sommelier, who had come down to the basement to restock the wine. He was confused because all he could see was me lying on the floor in a pool of blood with 10 knives around me. I got taken to hospital.''

What a gas

''I was working on the north coast of County Antrim, where a new gas oven had just been installed at the restaurant,'' recalls Graeme Nutt of Duchess of Spotswood, Melbourne. ''The head chef went to light one of the burners, not knowing the gas had been left on by the technician 15 minutes earlier. The whole thing was caught on CCTV, which was delayed every five seconds so that all you saw was a massive fireball and our head chef running, in extreme slow motion, out of the kitchen. He had minor burns but a good payout from the gas company.''

Sorry chef …

James Viles of Biota Dining, Bowral, was a young cook in a restaurant with a small brigade of chefs when its head chef rang down from his office. ''He asked the apprentice and I to make the truffle mash for a pork hock dish,'' Viles says. ''Young and eager we began. However, the addition of truffle had us both puzzled. First, we made the mash. We then chopped one truffle and folded it through. Thinking there was not enough flavour and not knowing what flavour we were looking for, we proceeded to chop eight truffles - about 700 grams - and folded it all through. Verbal and physical abuse followed. And about two months of heavy-duty cleaning.''(Provedore Simon Johnson says the retail bill for 700 grams of West Australian truffles would be $1500 today.)

Wake-up call

''On a busy weekend morning I was on the coffee machine when a young guy came in,'' says Jono Hill of A Minor Place, Brunswick, Victoria. ''His hair was slightly askew but the most intriguing thing was that he was naked but for a pair of boxer shorts. He just stood there scratching himself. He ordered a flat white then stepped back. I thought he must have a screw loose. In those situations, it's better not to look at someone. But then his face started to change and he began to look around for the first time. He saw everyone looking at him. Something clicked. His face dropped and he backed away, turned, walked out the door and then ran up the street. He never came back. The only explanation we could come up with was that he had been sleepwalking.''

Stay calm and carry on

''When we opened Steel Bar and Grill three years ago, everything was shiny and ready to go,'' says Damian Heads, the executive chef at Steel, Pony in the Rocks and Pony Neutral Bay. ''But in the first week, one of the ceiling sprinklers - which were too low a grade to be over the wood fire grill - burst and flooded the grill and flushed the deep fryers all over the floor. We had 150 people booked for lunch, and this was 11.30am. So instead I cooked the steaks on the salamander oven and it worked brilliantly. When something like that happens, it just teaches you to suck it up and get on with it.''

Escape alert

''When working at Donovans back in 1998, we had our usual flat-out Saturday,'' says Matt Major of EightyOne Fine Food & Wine, Melbourne. ''Live yabbies were delivered; I didn't get time to prep them for that night's service, so I just put them in the back of the coolroom. Once service started, it was crazy busy. I was asked to grab something from the coolroom. I opened the door to see the floor was moving; it was covered in yabbies. The little buggers had escaped. I was too busy to deal with it, so I just closed the door.'' Major describes a bad day in the kitchen of a busy restaurant as ''a tsunami of crap'', and suggests ''go with it [rather] than fight against it''.

 Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 2012