SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Being a night owl and veteran bar hopper, I’ve run into my share of bachelorette parties. The scene’s always the same. A young woman, wearing a veil and slightly crooked grin, prances down the street, her stumbling bridesmaids in tow.
To this day, no one has ever heard me softly hum, “Another One Bites the Dust.”
I avoid bachelorette parties, but one night last month I found a veiled woman and her crew hooting and hollering at a place not renowned for such energy.
A restaurant.
It wasn’t Chez Chippendale’s. It was an American take on a combination hibachi grill and Mongolian barbecue. This ski resort town in the Sierra Nevadas has a few hot party spots, but not many compare to Fire & Ice.
Appropriately named, this eatery is one part restaurant, two parts cookery showmanship and three parts party. I walked in the night before the start of the Tour of California bike race merely looking to fill my empty stomach.
A 7-Eleven burrito would do. Instead, I saw a giant round skillet surrounded by a posse of beautiful women slightly obscured by climbing flames and flying spatulas.
As a husky waiter flipped a piece of tuna 4 feet in the air, the women filled the smoky air with hoots and hollers that would embarrass a stripper.
The waiter turned to me with a smile as wide as the local ski resorts and said sarcastically, “Yeah, this job’s terrible.”
Paul Retta, 30, is not a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. He, like all the other cooks lucky enough to get hired here, were hired for their personality, not their knowledge of French sauces.
While most restaurants’ calling card is great food or great atmosphere, Fire & Ice banks on great personalities.
“Some of them have never cooked before,” assistant manager Terin King said. “It’s very easy to learn to cook. We look for people who can entertain. We can’t teach that person how to be that person.”
Retta, wearing a ballcap over his black hair, worked with a short guy with red wrist wraps who bounced hard plastic mixing cups off the grill and into a bin like Steve Nash throwing bounce passes. Little grease fires do not occur by accident.
With every flip of a pile of chopped sirloin or calamari, a spatula does a 720 in the air and is caught just above the flames. It’s part of the job description when they’re hired.
One cook, Retta said, actually goes out and practices.
“The guy should be in a circus,” Retta said. “I’m just trying to keep the spatula in my hand.”
Fire & Ice is the place to work in Tahoe. King said during their last hiring streak, they had 13 openings. There were between 350 to 400 applicants.
“Who doesn’t want to come to work and play with food?” King said.
This is all by corporate design. Fire & Ice is also in Boston, Providence, R.I., Cambridge, Mass., and Anaheim, Calif., and every one the corporate suits has loosened his tie.
“We hire people who complement each other and work together as a team,” King said. “We have to hire the right people. Some come in and don’t work out. They don’t like it and move on. But then we’ll find the sparkling gems.”
Fortunately for my stomach, the flying spatulas aren’t designed to take attention from the food. It’s the ultimate buffet grill.
It’s arranged on three long tables. One side has more than a dozen chopped fish. Scallops. Tuna. Shrimp. Salmon. Mahi Mahi. A chopstick away are the meats. Sirloin. Andouille sausage, BBQ ribs. Pulled pork. On the other side of the fish are bowls of imaginative sauces. Zesty pomodoro. Orange ginger. Sweet chili. Thai curry.
On another wall are the pastas and veggies. On another are the salads and toppings. You pile what you want in a plastic cup and give it to one of the chefs. Then you wait around the grill with the others like a pack of dogs at feeding time.
How it tastes is up to you. Finding the right sauce is a dangerous trial and error. In other words, don’t put fajita sauce on turkey.
But go ahead and experiment. It’s all you can eat and come hungry. It’s $14.95 for lunch and $26.95 for dinner.
And you might learn all kinds of dangerous things to do with a spatula.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
If you go
Fire & Ice, 4100 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe, Calif., 530-542-6650, .
