Ungodly Hot

I worked in kitchens for nearly 30 years, most were hot and steamy places, some were ungodly so.

My first job as a head chef was in an open air kitchen on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S.V.I. Customers were seated on a pier extending into the waters of a lagoon at the far end of an ocean inlet. We were about a quarter mile from Nazareth Bay and the ocean and caught a faint but steady sea breeze at our location. The kitchen was open on two walls, a tin roof protected us from the rain. Hinged plywood shutters dropped in place to close the open spaces at the end of the evening. Our kitchen equipment consisted of a large pizza oven, an open steam table, a deep fryer and a two burner electric cook top. The entire space was less than 200 square feet and the two cooks had to constantly dance around each other. I remember the place as being very busy but not terribly hot. Joe Papios and I drank cold beer and plastic pitchers of ice water throughout the evening shift and sweated so much and so fast we never felt the alcohol. It was hot but not brutal. We'd often experience power blackouts and have to cook by lamp light and the light from the beams of the owners car which he would point at the kitchen door. In the dark or in the light we moved, danced, perspired and enriched our audience.

The combination of heat and work insures that you will sweat. Perspiration helps cool the internal organs and keeps the musculature loose, flexible and capable of even more work. The skin is the biggest organ of the body. It's porous nature acts as a huge filtration system, toxins that normally would be filtered out of your system by the lungs, liver and kidneys quickly exit your body during a good sweat. Perspiration equals purification.

When I got back to the states I helped open a new fine dining restaurant. Everything was brand new, the kitchen seemed open and airy after my last post. We opened in early autumn and throughout the fall and winter seasons things went swimmingly. During the late spring of the next year the cooks started complaining about the intense heat they were experiencing on the line. It's rare to hear experienced cooks ever mention the heat. I went looking for a thermostat to crank up the air conditioning only to discover that the kitchen was built without A/C ductwork. By early summer things were getting unbearable. We were clocking temperature nearing 140 degrees on the line near the end of lunch service. I asked management to check with building's owner (a banker) about the possibility of getting the kitchen connected to the air conditioning system. His response was, "I thought those people liked the heat." Nothing was done until the night I looked over at my broiler cook, Jimmy Lee, a 20 year old Chinese kid who grew up working in his family's restaurant. Jimmy Lee's face was stone white, his skin cold to the touch, his breathing shallow and his pulse was racing. I knew the signs of heat stroke. I carried Jimmy to the office and laid him on the floor, I loosened his pants and put iced compresses on his abdomen and chest trying to drop his core temperature. I called the hospital and they said they wanted to see him in the emergency room ASAP. By that time Jim was coming around and I was able to transport him the quarter mile to the hospital. They looked him over and put him on a saline I.V. They wrapped him in blankets so the cool hospital A/C would not send him into shock.

The next day I rotated cooks on and off the line so no one was exposed to the extreme heat for more than half a hour. I insisted that everyone stay hydrated. I told the banker that he had a week to get the air flowing or I'd report the unsafe work environment to OSHA, the health department and anyone else willing to listen.

Yes, the heat can kill you. If you take in as much moisture as you lose you will probably be O.K. but blasts of extreme heat can cause dizziness, fainting and seizure. Guys at the Armco steel plant used to call these events heat concussions.

After the fancy restaurant I got the head chef's job at the city's oldest restaurant. The kitchen was on the lowest floor of a historic building erected in 1888. Most of the equipment was ancient, everything was fired by gas, except the three pressurized steamer units. Huge exhaust fans filled transom windows overlooking the alleyway, they moved enough air around the large kitchen to keep it fairly comfortable in the open areas. The cooking line was a lot warmer as the workers were surrounded by flames. The most intense station was the first broiler. He was trapped in the interior of the line with three cooks on either side of him. His station had two ancient gas broiler ovens. At his midsection was the broiler drawer, this was fed by an overhead open flame. Above each broiler was an oven. This broiler man was the primary fish chef, most of his cooking was done it the ovens. The cook was named Henry Ford, we called him Chuck, he was a man of about 6 feet 5 inches and weighed around 300 pounds. Every time he opened an oven door he was hit with a blast of heat right in the face while the broiler drawer belched a steady pulse of calidity into his gut. Chuck being a big man sweated profusely, by the end of service he would be standing in what we referred to as 'Lake Chuck.'

"Give me enough water and I would work in hell," quote from a successful job applicant.

Read David Masumoto's 'Wisdom of the Last Farmer' as he poignantly describes, sweat, dust and the smell of earth. Take your sorry, lazy ass to a sauna and sweat out a weeks worth of greasy burgers and Lite beer and see how you feel. Everyone who works or plays hard knows the bliss of transudation.