Manna from Hollywood

Written by: Kate Snyder, Executive Assistant

In the 16th chapter of the book of Exodus, the Israelites, who have been wandering about in the desert, hungry, tired and noticeably grumpy for some time now, are finally given a break. God rains down upon them bread from the heavens – literally. Manna falls from the sky, the Israelites are thrilled and there is much rejoicing. A similar thing happened here at EECM two weeks ago involving cookware, though luckily it arrived via truck rather than directly from above.

As you may or may not be aware (I wasn’t), the Spike TV mini-series entitled the Kill Point was filmed in Pittsburgh. Filming for the show wrapped up recently and we got a call from a somewhat frazzled but very nice man at the production studio (a subsidiary of Lion’s Gate Entertainment) asking if by chance we could use an Italian restaurant.

That’s right…a whole restaurant. One of their set pieces was said restaurant, which had been outfitted in brand-new, high-quality, commercial grade cookware, furniture and appliances. And now that the show was over, they had no use for those set pieces and were looking to offload them to a worthy cause. Apparently, this happens a lot; the cost and hassle involved in selling off the used pieces is more than the production companies want to deal with and so they either throw away or donate their old sets.

After a few moments of stunned silence (and a few more where my co-workers and I worked to convince ourselves that this was not some weird Hollywood joke) we heartily agreed to take the leftover kitchen pieces. And so EECM is now the proud possessor of a gorgeous eight-burner Vulcan stove, a large stainless steel refrigerator, as-yet uncounted boxes of dishes and cookware, several prep tables, a few dining tables with chairs, a bread oven and a soda fountain.

And we are thrilled and there is much rejoicing.