The road to restaurant hell is paved with good intentions

enough to buy some wine glasses and paint the inside like the color of a salmon and put up a sign.

We had a tiny staff, but we won best new restaurant in Pittsburgh Magazine. I was absolutely floored. The same week that we won that, [longtime former Post-Gazette dining critic] Woodene Merriman came in and gave us a 4-star review. That was the convergence of the perfect storm to get busy. Everything at once.

That weekend it was like 96 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and the air re-circulator went down. And there’s people lined up out the door. It’s like 125 degrees in my kitchen. And my cook, Marge, was a wonderful middle-aged woman who was very heavyset. And we’re cooking, and I’m seeing fishhooks from near heat stroke. I’m delirious. I had to step outside. I come back in, and Marge says she’s going down to the refrigerator to get a tenderloin. And she doesn’t come back up. My other cook goes downstairs and comes back up and says, “Chris! Marge passed out. But it’s OK, I put her in the walk-in [cooler].”

And my mind wasn’t even working right. It was like cooking drunk. We were pushing all this food out. And, the long and the short of it, is, we forgot about Marge. We had this old bartender, Edwin, and he goes downstairs later that night to get some alcohol and I hear him shout, “CHRIS! CALL AN AMBULANCE!”

And then the ambulance comes, and at first they thought it was for me. But they went and got her on the gurney, and as they’re coming back up the steps, they drop her. Needless to say I went to the hospital after the night was done. She was OK, though. But I thought we almost killed her.