Grease fire at Korean Grill House seems more inevitable than tragic

Grease fire at Korean Grill House seems more inevitable than tragic

No through traffic: customers flee onto a closed Queen Street as firefighters attend to the fire (Photo by Alfred Ng, Toronto Life Flickr pool)

A small fire broke out late Monday afternoon at the Korean Grill House, the restaurant at Queen West and McCaul where diners are invited to heat their own dinner on cooking pits built into their tables. The restaurant was evacuated and the street briefly shut down. The Star tells us that no one was hurt in the fire, which started in a basin that collects the grease from the tabletop grills. Considering barely trained customer-chefs are manning flaming grills, the question we’re asking is not “How did this happen?” but “How does this not happen more often?”

• Grease fire forces diners to flee Queen St. W. eatery [Toronto Star]