Zach Foster, 23, chef de cuisine of Flying Fish in Belltown, says the most dangerous dish his restaurant cooks is the whole fried rockfish. It’s prone to spilling grease out of its mouth when you’re pulling it out of the fryer, he says.

His worst burn happened a few years ago on Valentine’s Day, when he grabbed a steaming pot and singed off the pads of every finger on his right hand. All I could do was wrap it up in a cold towel and glove and keep working, he explained. It’s not uncommon for his arms to get sizzled at work once in a while, and he has the burns to prove it.

Joseph Sodhi, 21, now a cook at Flying Fish in Belltown, got his worst scar while throwing away a tomato-sauce lid at his family’s restaurant. The lid got caught and went deep into his finger.

I had just gotten stitches for something else, so I decided to just Super-Glue it, he said.

Maria Rangel, 22, of Macrina Bakery in Belltown, has been in the kitchen for years. As a kid I used to bake my own birthday cakes, she says. The lip-shaped scar on her forearm, which she has nicknamed Eddie, was acquired when she knocked a pot of boiling sugar into a sheet pan of apple tart tatin.

Her immediate response was to laugh. It turned into a huge water blister that lasted for two weeks, she said. It was really fun…and sexy.

Paul Mears, 39, of Cyclops in Belltown, might be Seattle’s king of kitchen scars. He’s been cooking for pay since he was 15, and has so many burn marks and scars on his forearms and hands, he doesn’t remember how most of them happened.

His deadliest scar, called The Frankensteiner, stretches across the bottom of his left palm. I was cleaning a slicer and my sleeve hit the ‘on’ switch and it cut every nerve and tendon in my hand, he said. Another time he spilled hot grease right into the hole in his combat boot, burning the tops of his toes.

Jonathan Garcia, 21, saute cook at El Gaucho, says he gets burned frequently when cooking crab cakes.

It’s because the fresh water left on the seafood bubbles when the cake is slipped into sizzling, clarified butter.

Larry Monaco, 39, executive chef at Queen City Grill in Belltown, remembers getting his worst burn when he was searing a tenderloin.

Hot grease hit the inside of my wrist, and I wiped my skin off with a wet towel, he said. Monaco said he could hear his heart beat in his wrist.

Aaron Benson, 28, cook at the Frontier Room in Belltown, says he’s been burned more by others than by himself.

His deepest cut happened when he was pushing a knife across a cutting board. It hit a crack, and his hand slid into the blade. Benson plays drums in the band ‘Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground’ and said his first thought was, Will I be able to play? Nowadays, when a show is coming up he is especially careful. I cut so slow!