A minor fire in the kitchen of Cowboy Club on Saturday, March 3, led to the temporary closure of the Uptown restaurant.

Staff expects the restaurant to reopen Friday, March 9.

“Yes, we had a minor fire in the kitchen last Saturday,” Cowboy Club owner Tom Gilomen said. “We thought we’d be back in the matter of a couple hours, but the fire marshal and the building inspector for the city came over and pointed out some things, so we’re redoing the kitchen, so to speak, and we’ll be opening Friday.”

“It was pretty minor, but we had to make sure it didn’t extend into the wall,” said Fire Marshall Jon Davis, of the Sedona Fire District. “There was some pyrolysis in the wall where it had been heating probably over the course of many years in the wall of the kitchen.

“Essentially what it is, is when you heat a carbonbased substance such as wood over many cycles of heating and cooling and heating and cooling, it slowly deteriorates it and turns into, like a briquette, the charcoal type,” Davis said. “What we found was there were a couple of
screws that penetrated the sheeting on the wall and those had heated up so many times essentially the wall behind it had deteriorated — it wasn’t even wood anymore.”

According to staff, there was a brief flame that was quickly extinguished. 

“It wasn’t anything too dramatic,” Davis said. “They’re closed down right now while they’re trying to get the wall repaired and resheeted. I would be surprised if they weren’t reopened by the weekend.”

“Never had a fire in 25 years, so we’re going to make sure this is the last one we have,” Gilomen said. “The city and the fire department have been very cooperative.” 

Christopher Fox Graham can be reached at 282-7795 ext. 129, or email editor@larsonnewspapers.com