The Oxford Fire Department responds to the kitchen fire Friday night at High Street Grill uptown. No one was injured in the incident. (Michael Pickering)
Students and visitors to Oxford had to do without dinner at the popular High Street Grill this weekend due to a fire Friday evening that closed the establishment through Monday.
The Oxford Fire Department received a call at 8:20 p.m. reporting a fire in the kitchen at High Street Grill, 116 E. High St.
Fire Chief Len Endress said that when trucks arrived, the restaurant had already been evacuated and the kitchen's fire suppression system had extinguished the flames. Firefighters stayed for almost an hour cleaning out the oven hood system and making sure there was no smoldering residue left.
High Street Grill Owner Bryan Hoelzer said the exact cause of the fire is still unknown, but said the flames were coming down from the hood ventilation system and were not caused by anything the kitchen staff did.
"It appears that they got some green wood," Endress said, and explained that burning such wood in a hickory wood oven causes chemical residue buildup in the ventilation system which probably caught fire.
Hoelzer said that the restaurant's hood system is cleaned every month, more often than the recommended three to six month cleaning schedule, but that the buildup indicated that the cleaning company wasn't doing a complete job.
"The company we had wasn't doing the job they were hired to do," Hoelzer said.
He said he has already hired a new company, which cleaned the ventilation system this weekend.
Aside from the cleaning of this system, Hoelzer said there was almost no damage from the fire. The only replacement was a line for the fire suppression system, which was charred.
No one was hurt and customers in the restaurant at the time didn't seem to be alarmed, according to Hoelzer.
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Miami University sophomore Emily Parker was finishing her meal with her mother and some sorority sisters when the alarms starting going off. She said there was a little bit of smoke visible coming out of the kitchen, but the staff very calmly asked everyone to leave.
"(Customers) were very understanding of what was going on," Hoelzer said.
The restaurant paid for everyone's meals who had to evacuate, which Hoelzer said added up to a couple thousand dollars in expenses.
Hoelzer said High Street Grill probably lost at least $10,000 worth of business over the weekend because it is their busiest time. In addition they threw out between $3,000 and $5,000 worth of products in the kitchen.
"If it happened during the week it probably would have only taken a day to reopen," Hoelzer said.
But because of the usual weekend crowds, the kitchen was stocked with much more food that had to be replaced and the cleaning companies took longer to get in contact with.
After the clean up and repairs, the health department cleared the restaurant Monday and it is set to reopen for normal business hours Tuesday, Oct. 3.
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