[Peachcreek]

What did you folks do for cooking when the power was out? Did the water go off too at your place?

[Anneke]

We couldn't continue to cook because the ventilation system was out and we would have eventually suffocated. We tried to salvage whatever we could from the walk-in by putting it all on ice. We didn't touch our freezers. We have a pastry shop annexed to the restaurant. Since we couldn't even get into the cash registers, we cut everything up and offered the scrumptious bites to pedestrians and people caught in slow traffic in front of the restaurant. All said it was probably good for business.

We're a fairly new restaurant. This experience made me realize that we were NOT prepared for this kind of emergency. But then that goes for all of us. The thought that we only have a 24hr city wide reserve of water is frightening to me...

[phatch]

Seems it could be worth it to invest in a backup generator to run the kitchen and the till. They're pretty pricey systems though. If power reliability were an issue in a location, it could be profitable.

I live in a well established neigbhorhood. Lots of big trees in the wires. I get power spikes and bumps when a good wind blows. When I redid the kitchen, the electrical was vastly upgraded and I added a whole house surge arrest (I've blown it twice) and have the computers on uninterruptible power supplies. I still blow out the computer power supplies every few years.

When the power's out, the gas grill or stoves get put to work. Or if there's time, the charcoal and dutch ovens.

I usually have about 20 gallons of water in storage so I'm good for the short term.

Phil

[IronChefATL]

I was on my second to last day of Garde Manger class. W had prepped 4 days for the "Grand Buffet". Power went down about 1 hour before we serve. The beauty of cold food, we served the entire school since we had the only eatable food

[Nick.Shu]

gawd, this brings back some memories.

No ventilation, so opened the back door.

V pleased about the natural gas appliances.

Sent the potwasher to the local supermarket to get some flashlights. When he got back, made a chain out of rubber bands, attached them to the flashlight and secured them to the top of my shoulder (a la flashlights like the marines out of Aliens had on stadium mounts)

Made sure that the FOH staff knew to let me know when a docket came in, and voila!

the show must go on.

Epilogue: some piece of **** actually stole a customers handbag that night. Not cool, not in the least.