Where I grew up
I grew up two blocks from The Original Ninfa's on Navigation, which has been feeding the East End since 1973. My grandmother worked the dining room there for nineteen years. I learned to read a hood by watching the line cooks complain about hot spots near the comal.
How I got onto a hood
I started in fire-protection inspection at twenty-two. Learned the suppression side first — UL-300, K-class, micro-switch trip cycles. The hood-cleaning side came later and felt obvious; if you have spent a thousand hours on the suppression side, the ventilation side is the part of the same system that you have spent a thousand hours not really looking at. The transition took eighteen months.
What I work on
Route 2 covers Spring Branch, Heights, and northwest. Sixteen restaurants, mostly two- and three-hood operators. I am also our liaison with the Houston Permitting Center and the Houston Health Department on FOG manifest filings — that work happens at a desk on Wednesday afternoons.
Outside the bay
I read about hospital-grade ventilation, which is the closest cousin to commercial kitchen ventilation in the regulated world. I cook at home in a small unhooded apartment kitchen and run the bath fan on high while I cook, which is more or less how every dorm in America violates ASHRAE 62.2.