Diners evacuated at the Bazaar
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We were halfway through the chef’s tapas tasting menu, in the middle of our Valenciano rice with wild mushrooms and Idiazábal cheese, when the fire alarms went off at the Bazaar on Monday night. Funny that nobody in the dining room paid any attention to the blaring alarms and the flashing strobe lights. Guess we all figured somebody in the kitchen had over-zealously ‘smoked’ the salmon. But then, security guards ushered everyone out to the SLS Hotel’s porte-cochere and driveway, where firetrucks pulled in so fast that we were more worried about being run over than being engulfed by flames. About 20 minutes later, after an ‘incident’ in the employee garage was taken care of (‘some debris caught fire,’ one manager said), fire officials deemed it safe for us to go back in. But by then, half the tables had called it a night and didn’t return. I was with three food scientists from CP Kelco, and we didn’t mind the excitement, even as ‘post-alarms’ continued to sound in the dining room. One said, ‘It’s like the time [my family] got caught in a hurricane in the Yucatan. My kids still talk about it. This is great.’
-- Betty Hallock
