Chefs Keep Cool During Cooking Time

``If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.''

- President Harry Truman

Easy for give-'em-hell Harry to say. He had a full-time chef in the White House.

And easy for most home cooks to say. When summer temperatures soar enough to wilt a watermelon, most people can retreat to the shade of a patio umbrella and dine on take-out or delivered food.

But not professional cooks. They're destined by job description and paycheck to hover close to the ovens and stoves regardless of how hot their kitchens get. So what do they do to beat the heat, or at least make it more bearable?

For a sizzling starter, let's check in at the Third Avenue branch of Hot Lips Pizza. Owner David Yudkin says cooks who work inches from the 500-degree pizza ovens seek relief through a variety of tactics. They adjust clip-on electric fans to get as much breeze as possible. They squirt each other in the back with water from plastic spray bottles. They dilute lemonade and soft drinks with about 75 percent water, creating better thirst quenchers than full-strength sweet liquids. They wear shorts. And they lobby the boss to buy more fans.

Cold drinks also are godsends for Catarino Almanza, head chef at Tlaquepaque Bar & Restaurant. He works a shift of up to four hours at the mesquite grill, broiling meats and seafoods. Arnie Gonzales, the Mexican restaurant's manager, says Almanza felt even hotter recently when he placed a thermometer on the grill and it registered 120 degrees.

Charlie Sripranaratanakul, chef at the Thai Pepper Restaurant on Mercer Island, opts for glass after glass of ice water when the lunch and dinner orders are being filled hot and fast.

Some people might expect Dante's Steak & Grog to be a raging inferno in the summertime, but kitchen manager Dave Kawase reports that cooks keep their cool with a one-two punch: quick mists of ice water from spray bottles to wet shirts, followed by standing as close as possible to the electric fan.

At the downtown Red Robin Burger and Spirits Emporium, manager Lisa Riffe took an informal poll and came up with several remedies. Two cooks drink hot coffee because it makes them perspire even more, prompting the natural cooling process. Others prefer a 30-second break in the walk-in cooler. One drinks Gatorade. And still another copes with the heat by putting his head under a running faucet and/or yelling at waitresses.

Elaine Young, owner of Linyen Restaurant in the International District, says cooks who work at woks fired up to more than 100 degrees get some relief from thin streams of cold water that spray across a stainless-steel rim between their stomachs and the stir-frying vessels. The cooling spray can be adjusted, and the water runs off into a drain. Another advantage of this quick style of Asian cooking is that the gas burners can be turned off between orders. ``We also have air conditioning in the kitchen, but when it really gets hot, I notice some of the cooks pulling their shirts out of their pants to cool themselves,'' Young adds.

If cooks become especially overheated, they can put their wrists under cold running water for a few seconds, says Walt Fisher, owner/chef of Skipper's Galley Restaurant in West Seattle. But he seldom resorts to that. ``I've been cooking for 50 years, including 25 years at this restaurant, and the hotter it gets the better I like it,'' Fisher says. ``I guess it's in my blood. When it's cool - that's when I'm unhappy.''