A metal splashback on the wall was vital protection for the chef at Eat Italy in Richmond when a gas explosion blew him across the kitchen last week.
The new restaurant at Berryfields Crossing had been open not quite a week when its owner, Cherif El Bakkali, got a phone call from his brother to say the kitchen had blown up.
“I thought it was a joke,” he says. “But then he said it again and I felt the tone in his voice.”
Cherif had just left the restaurant on the morning of 3 May. He had just been in the kitchen with his young son, right where the explosion blew out the wall and sent kitchen equipment flying.
The explosion was triggered after a contractor accidentally drilled a screw into an LPG pipe while putting a shelf on the wall.
The pipe supplied gas to the kitchen’s cooking hobs, but the pipe’s rupture went unnoticed until the chef arrived to prepare food for the restaurant when it opened for lunch.
When he flicked the switch to the gas, the resulting spark triggered the explosion immediately, blowing out the wall and throwing the chef and cookware across the kitchen.
Thrown onto his back, Cherif says the chef’s reaction was to leap up and hit the emergency button on the wall to shut off the gas.
“I’m so proud of my chef for pressing the emergency button,” he says. “It was a relief no one was injured. It could have been worse.”
Cherif attributes the metal splash back behind the hob for saving his chef from worse injuries as he was standing in front of it to flick the gas switch and it stayed attached to the wall, stopping gib from hitting him.
The chef and assistant chef were both blown by the blast and a waitress cleaning the restaurant was hit by gib flying across the room.
Cherif says the blast left the chef with a sore chest and everyone in shock of what had happened and what could have happened.
At the time, Fire and Emergency New Zealand said the explosion could have been a lot worse if the gas had built up more and spread further.
Cherif says the restaurant’s opening had gone so well and it had been “busy and successful and exciting” until the explosion.
“People were loving the food and the atmosphere and having something new. I like the family environment and it was working like that.
“But we will be back stronger for sure. We feel the community is behind us and we are very grateful for the support.”
He hopes the restaurant will be reopened in a couple of weeks. Most of the wall will have to be removed for rewiring and then have gib replaced and repainted.
Some kitchen equipment needs to be replaced as well including a fridge and the hob.
The restaurant is insured and Cherif says the six full-time staff will continue to be paid while the work is being carried out.
“I wasn’t worried about the building because it is insured. We were very lucky.”
As he says: “It is what it is. You can’t do much about it.”
He is now looking forward to reopening the restaurant and seeing customers again.
