The clock hasn’t struck noon yet and the pots are already on the fire. The kitchen at El Manicomio guachinche is running smoothly. Pans with cheese, the first tapas of the day, and the customers, hungry, entering the establishment in search of ‘good, nice, and cheap’ food, as they usually say. It hasn’t even been a week since the disaster, but both the guachinche’s clientele and staff are unaware of what happened.
On Sunday, May 19, a little before three in the afternoon, the bottom part of the grill tube caught fire due to the high demand. “The chistorras and chorizos made the fire go up, but within two minutes it was extinguished thanks to a fire extinguisher I had,” recounts Juan Miguel Arias, owner of El Manicomio. Total chaos, as Arias explains, was caused by a couple who entered the premises to eat at that moment. “They started shouting ‘fire!, fire!’ and alarmed all the customers who were calmly having lunch.”
15 tables left without paying
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The situation happened so fast that within minutes the firefighters and the Guardia Civil were at the door. “Upon arrival, they came in, saw that everything was in order and immediately gave us permission to continue working,” explains Juan Miguel Arias. At that moment, the guachinche had 34 tables and with the fire alarm, 15 of them got up and left without paying. However, two of them later contacted the establishment to pay. “As they showed concern, we told them not to, all we wanted was for them to come back,” he says.
The rest of the tables waited outside for everything to return to normal and within minutes were finishing their meal. “I never saw any danger, I wasn’t going to risk it, but nothing happened and everything was under control,” explains Juan Miguel. At 28 years old and coming from Tenerife, El Manicomio is his first business. “I opened it because at the guachinche where I used to work on the neighbouring island, many Canarians always came by and asked when we were going to open there, so along with my partner, I took the plunge,” he comments.
Rumours in town
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According to Arias, the entire kitchen is new, and there is even an automatic fire suppression system in the tubes. After the scare, they have reviewed everything, installed a new structure, replacing all the damaged parts.
With the return to normalcy, what Juan Miguel misses the most is what people in town have made up, claiming that the grill cook and chef fought with knives, that there was no security, or that the best thing they could do was to go back to Tenerife.
