Thursday, May 15, 2008
City shuts down cooking school
Larry Bly
Larry Bly runs an ad agency and does freelance writing in the Roanoke area.
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Sometimes a little free publicity can be a bad thing. Take, for instance, the recent lovely article in The Roanoke Times regarding Doreen Sidor's cooking classes at Twist & Turns. Lindsey Nair wrote in glowing terms, and there were lots of color photos. The food looked good enough to eat. Which seems to be the problem. It was enough to make anyone trot down there. And that's exactly what the city of Roanoke did the very next morning!
Through the door simultaneously came the city fire marshal's office and the city's health department representative. Cynthia Gardner, Twist & Turns owner, found herself being grilled, fried and sautéed because of the cooking school article.
The health department apparently had issues with the kitchen at Twist & Turns. It is not licensed as "a restaurant." Thus, participants couldn't put food in a container and take it home.
As for the city fire marshal's office ... well, let's just say it's been an ongoing thing with them since Day 1 in this kitchen. Let's harken back a decade to when the kitchen was first installed. Putting an overhead hood with a fire-suppression system would have been prohibitively expensive because of the historic building's characteristics and floor plans. This is especially critical as there are people living in the dorms above the Twist & Turns retail space. It's home to out-of-town Mill Mountain Theatre actors -- a great use of the old Shenandoah Hotel.
A simpler system was worked out with the previous fire marshal, using the Thermadore stove's built-in exhaust system piped under the floor and out to the street in front of the building. That solution cost Cynthia more than $5,000 but it's important to do the right thing. Spending in excess of $40,000 for the overhead system was beyond her means.
All seemed to be in order until the fire marshal's office found out that we were doing a TV show in the kitchen a few years back.
My Exeptional Entertaining show had chefs cooking up a storm in front of a live audience. Again, the city officals came a-calling. If the previous guy said it was OK and you had the signed paper to prove it, there shouldn't be problem, right? Forget it. Another round of questions and answers and plenty of gray area to hassle with. Finally it was decided that so long as we're just doing a TV show, it would be OK.
However, no one had better use the stove to heat up lunch for the staff at Twist & Turns lest some poor souls fall into the pan and fricassee themselves. Apparently, the only way to heat up anything on the expensive Thermodore would be to bring in a TV camera, which makes it OK. Are you following me?
To be fair, the city employees are just doing their jobs in an effort to help protect the public. It's what they're paid to do and they take that quite seriously. But as is often the case, bureaucracy and common sense collide.
If you can taste the food at a cooking school, why can't you sneak some food home in your purse? Heck, my Aunt Tootsie used to keep fried chicken parts and other food in her pocketbook for days at a time.
There seems to be some kind of kitchen witch at work in this place. Back when we were doing the Exeptional Entertaining cooking segments at Twist & Turns, I got called into a way-too-long meeting with the Virginia ABC folks. We were allowing people to enjoy a little bubbly while we taped the shows -- it made the folks livelier and laugh more.
Was there are a charge to get in?
"No."
A charge for the bubbly?
"No."
Was it open to the public?
"Nope, just a small group of clients and friends were invited."
After nearly an hour of this questioning, it was decided (and here we go again) that as long as "it's just a TV show" we seemed to be breaking no laws. Thank heavens TV is not real. I know. I've done it for more than 30 years.
It was yet another city authority that put Doreen's cooking school back on the front burner.
A visit from the city health inspector over the past week resulted in a ban on doing most things you do with a stove. Nothing more can be done in this hell-foresaken kitchen. No more cooking demos, no more frying or sautéing, no more fund-raisers with chefs, no more anything. And we'd better not catch those sneaky Twist & Turns employees heating up anything either, unless it's by microwave!
But the good news is that I can still do a cooking TV show there. So it looks like I'm the only one that came out of this thing unscathed. It's a heck of a note: I can use her kitchen, but Cynthia can't.
Only in Roanoke.
Bly for now.
