War wounds

Interesting "interactive feature" in the NY Times on the various cuts, burns, and psychic stab wounds suffered by an assortment of chefs. It's here....

Nauseating and scary. Um, er, thanks.

At home who hasn't finished cooking a dinner with a wrapped finger in the air? Or on a cooking line with a wrapped finger inside a latex glove being held up in the air when possible?

Here's the ultimate: I ran his kitchen for a week while he was in the hospital. He was a good friend.

On February 3, 1995, Bernard Chang, owner of China Grill, was stabbed by an employee. Fellow chefs Jimmy Ishii, Jose Gutierrez, and Erling Jensen, among others, formed Bernard's Friends, Inc. to operate China Grill. "Since none of the volunteer chefs cooks Chinese, the reduced menu sports an 'East Meets West' theme," Juncos wrote. "This week, Chef Gutierrez will offer his pork tournedos with Thai curry sauce and red onion vinegar and monkfish wok-medallions with Madagascar peppers." Chang passed away a few months later.

I hate it when I am in the kitchen focusing on my chopping with a large chef's knife and Gene comes in and starts talking to me. I've cut off the tips of nails, taken skin off, but never anything big. He finally gets it...don't come into the room and start talking when I am chopping with a big knife! Took awhile!

I don't know a single foodie who isn't missing at least some of finger. Moi has a couple of square ends.

I don't know a single foodie who isn't missing at least some of finger..

There are plenty of 'foodies' who don't cook. But maybe they lose their fingers from competitive fork-jabbing for food at the dinner table.

My left thumb has a slight lump from where the doc re-attached the sliced-off bit.

It was a bad experience only because there was a girl in the ER screaming her head off about something and, boy, were her lungs good.

I don't have any fingertips that are actually missing but I do have a pretty nice scar on one pinkie and one on a thumb from kitchen accidents. Same pinkie has some more extensive scarring due to a chemistry accident.

I can fully understand accidentally lopping off finger tips in a busy kitchen, but I am disgusted and appalled by the two stories of chefs who intentionally burned their employees for making simple, naive mistakes. That kind of thing is completely unacceptable - actually, it's criminal. Assault charges, anyone?