March 29, 2024

If you can’t stand the heat...

PCFD takes charge of Stampede kitchen for Valentine’s dinner

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Ryan Van Der Kamp fully admits he and his team of firefighters aren’t the best waiters around. Sometimes, he said, they get distracted when chatting with customers or communicating their orders to the cooking crew in the back kitchen.

For the fifth year in a row, the Prairie City Fire Department took a crash course in waiting tables, cooking full meals and washing dishes during the station’s Valentine’s dinner and fundraiser Saturday at Stampede. Even though there might be a bit of chaos strewn about the Prairie City restaurant, staff members said they love the small break they get.

Van Der Kamp was delegated to waiting tables during the dinner. Assigned a section of the restaurant and given instructions by Stampede staff and his fellow co-workers, the fire chief was certainly out of his element even though he had waited tables at the department’s previous Valentine’s Day dinners. But so were many of the firefighters.

Admittedly, that’s also part of the fundraiser’s appeal, as proven by the approximately 110 registrations. Customers paid $25 per person for an appetizer of cheese sticks, a salad, a baked potato, a bread stick an eight-ounce sirloin steak, four jumbo shrimp and a dessert dish — all of which are prepared and served by the 18 members of the Prairie City Fire Department.

Although order is encouraged, it’s not mandatory on a day like this.

“We’ve done this for several years now,” Van Der Kamp said. “It’s fun to the people because we’re not very good at it, so they get to laugh at us. It just gets us out in the community. They see us out here trying and we have fun doing it.”

For Todd Fiechter, who has owned Stampede for the past three years, the decision to continue on the restaurant and fire department collaboration kicked off from the previous owner was a no brainer. Especially when many of the firefighters already support his business anyway, he said.

Fiechter said a percentage of the proceeds, all tips and customer donations go straight to the Prairie City Fire Department. Coupled with the station’s fall car show, money collected goes toward department needs such as equipment and vehicles.

"Last year they made good money — they've made good money every year they've done it," Fiechter said.

Putting the firefighters in an environment and situation they are not as familiar with is part of the reason why the event is so successful, Fiechter said. There are times where he doubted the members would not know what to do or how to handle the pressure of being bombarded with a nearly endless stream of tickets.

But Fiechter remembered how a bit of firefighter ingenuity a previous year solved some communication problems. Finding it difficult to walk back and forth from the kitchen to the outdoor grill area, a couple firefighters utilized walkie talkies to organize cooking times. That memory alone rids any doubts Fiechter may have.

“I was so afraid the first time,” he said. “But if they didn’t do a great job, I wasn’t worried. The community is going to give ‘em a break They know they’re doing this for a good cause. It’s more of a fun social thing than it is a dinner or a fundraiser — it’s more of a social get-together.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com