Cook and Ladder

CP breaks bread with Philly's food-loving firefighters.

by Brion Shreffler

Neal Santos

STANDING THE HEAT: The kitchen at Engine 49 at 13th and Shunk. The cooking techniques and traditions of Philly firefighters differ greatly, but a sense of camaraderie is always present.

[ snackdraft ]

We've been lectured about the decline in dining traditions — and the crumbling of society that goes along with it — as long as any of us can remember. But all you need to do is visit a Philly firehouse to realize that true family dinners are alive.

Firehouse meals serve as a salve to the pressures, demands and frustrations of an extremely dangerous job. (The night prior to my visit to Engine 49 of South Philly, they, along with West Philly's Engine 57, battled a five-alarm inferno.) The top-to-bottom delegation of kitchen duties, along with the camaraderie so apparent during the meals, reinforce the job's requisite cohesion.

"The firehouse isn't really a place for a lone wolf," Joe Metzger of Engine 49 says, pointing out that very few firefighters choose to eat at home or brown-bag it. Everyone contributes to the meals in some way — and, as with any family, keeping costs down is at the forefront. Though single-pot dishes (usually robust chilis or stews) offer the best defense to calls that can come at any moment, the firehouses I visited took more of an "we eat what we want" approach. It's a challenge, considering the unpredictability of the job.

The firehouse kitchen also offers a window onto an etiquette system that extends beyond meals. If you cook, you don't touch any dishes — that duty is left to those with the least seniority. Officers don't have to cook or clean due to their position, while medics, due to their frequent calls, are exempt, as well.

Since "guest" firefighters — those who visit houses other than their own to cover shifts — earn time-and-a-half pay, it's incumbent of them to show their appreciation by bringing treats or snacks, especially since they're not required to chip in cash for meals. (Prior to the start of every "tour," or two-night/two-day shift rotation, everyone contributes $25 for food. The city pays only for heat, electricity, and water.) Stock's pound cake, Czerw's kielbasa and Marchiano's tomato pie are but of the few items guests have showed up with in the past.

To see how they do it, numerous firehouses across the city welcomed me in to join them at table.

Engine 49, 13th and Shunk

Following the 5-to-6 p.m. shift change, the guys on "D" platoon are about 15 minutes into dinner prep. Mushrooms sit in a colander in one of two sinks of an island station holding scallops set atop paper towels, which Ken Mayer sprinkles with salt and pepper. Steve Mesete sets places at a picnic table. Metzger, the house's go-to cook, darts off toward the stove for a moment, minding a marinara informed by a sauté of crushed garlic, onion, olive oil, oregano and fresh parsley.

The scallops wait in squadrons to join the sauce, while a pot of water heats for linguine. As Metzger drops a slab of butter into a cast-iron pan, an alarm sounds and everyone hurries off, gets into their gear and jets out of the garage before I notice the sauce's burner been shut off — literally a dizzying matter of seconds between alarm and exit. I add water to the pot and wait.

Twenty minutes later, Metzger rushes back in to relight the stove. Mayer holds a baking tray to collect the scallops as they're pan-seared, while Mesete retrieves the shrimp he advocated for during a pre-shift stroll through a seafood distribution center.

"Did you devein the shrimp?" Metzger asks, adding the mushrooms to the sauce. "Don't worry about it, too late now." Not that it matters. The shrimp and scallops, cooked right in the marinara, are incredibly flavorful. Grated locatelli dropped off by Mesete's girlfriend rings with the slight spice of the sauce, which goes nicely with garlic bread blessed by whole roasted cloves.

Lt. Steve Olszwski alternates between observations of his crew from his seat at the head of the table to comments linking all that I see with firehouses everywhere. Mayer, his crew cut befitting the childlike glee with which he launches into stories, gets back to the guy they recently rescued from PCP-induced wrestling match with the ground. There's laughter.

"I told you we should have gone with the shrimp," Mesete says.

Engine 11, Sixth and South

Tracey Savage quietly gauges the scents wafting up from her stir-fry, the overhead fans helping her. After a moment, she adds dashes of salt, pepper and a touch of cayenne.

"I used to make it from scratch, but then I found the oyster sauce approximates it nicely," Savage says of the sauce for the pepper steak she's also cooking, her prep affected by the demands of the profession. "The fresh stuff [garlic and ginger] too often gets wasted." Like Engine 49's Metzger, who pulls ingredients from a CSA near Horsham, she likes to bring in her produce fresh, from a community garden in Germantown.

As rice finishes in a cooker, Savage turns down the heat on the onions and green peppers ahead of adding the steak and the sauce.

With dinner winding down, Lt. Mike Foley, a multiple-time chili cookoff winner, rhapsodizes on his frogmore stew — kielbasa, shrimp, potatoes, and corn — he cooks in a crab boil during the summer. He revels in detailing his discovery of good food while on navy leave in Spain, and the meals at an annual firefighter's camping trip in Maryland, where gumbo, crabs, broccoli rabe, cheesesteaks and craft beer all act as ambassadors of various points on the map.

Neal Santos

Joe Metzger, Engine 49's "go-to cook."

Engine 57, 56th and Chestnut

Jim Devenney preps barbecue-perfect coleslaw — red wine vinegar, sugar, mayo and a head of grated cabbage — while a beef tenderloin sits sliced into steaks thaws.

Since many of the guys Engine 57, like firefighters everywhere, work two jobs to support a family, buying in bulk is key, particularly when adhering to the firehouse motto of "prepare for 10, cook for 20." (Any leftover steaks will see the inside of a hoagie roll come lunch the next day.)

After a 15-minute interlude — a "shoe run," or non-fire call that turns out to be a false alarm — Maurice Hutchins sautés red pepper flake-spiced green beans in olive oil and butter, while John Pendergast (he's working on the third edition of a fireman's cookbook with his dad, who helms a firehouse in Germantown) slices baguettes. Devenney applies an electronic mixer to a pot of cubed potatoes he's dropped a stick of butter into.

Soon I'm out in the garage with Devenney, smoke wafting up from the grill positioned next to the fire engine. On the job for more than 22 years and cooking for just as long, his cycling through of stories and traditions could just as well be coming from an uncle on Fourth of July weekend.

Bearing parallel sear marks, the steaks have the right amount of juicy pink. Gravy lifted by salt, pepper and sautéed onion and garlic pours from my mountain of creamy spuds. The slaw is as light and refreshing as the iced tea I helped make during their call, a chandelier of tea bags dunked for a few minutes in boiling water and set to ice with a sane amount of sugar.

Engine 29 and Rescue 1, Fourth and Girard

"We eat a bit healthier here," Tony Dillenbeck says, while several guys jokingly ask, "Where the hell is the gravy?" The steamed broccoli, overcooked due to a false alarm, is given only a tablespoon of butter, much like the mashed potatoes. "Some guys want to stay healthier," says Dillenbeck, as the guy next to me sprinkles on Old Bay.

"I just realized we were eating too much of it," says Sylvester Evans of the pork and red meat he gave up awhile back. So, while marinated pork is kissed by flames on the grill, he, along with one other guy, awaits oven-roasted chicken breasts. A mixed lettuce salad is enlivened by roasted sunflower seeds, mixed low-fat cheese and the rich oil from roasted long-hots — a station tradition.

"They'll get cubed and put into omelettes for lunch," Dillenbeck says of the leftover pork, while an industrial slicer, adjacent to a small deep fryer, speaks to another choice method of recycling — on days after cooking a roast on night shift, they slice up what's left for sandwiches. The cook sits back, joyfully absorbing barbs about his cooking. "Great burnt salmon," the officer on duty keeps saying of the boneless pork chops.

"These guys," Tony later says, a steely focus in his eyes, "like myself, we want to be here." The firehouse's seating, abutted by couches and lounge chairs, is fitting of the denlike atmosphere.

While trying to keep track of the banter rapid-fire shooting back and forth, I recall another of Mayer's comments from Engine 49: "You lose camaraderie, you lose a lot," he told me earnestly, between a litany of stories wherein gravitas gave way to hilarity. Lose these meals, and you'd lose even more.

(restaurants@citypaper.net)