Madrid Emergency Service via Reuters
A beloved cooking trick ended in tragedy Friday night, after a flambéed pizza started a deadly fire at an upscale restaurant in Madrid. The blaze allegedly began when a flaming pizza set fire to the decorations at Burro Canaglia Bar&Resto in the city’s Salamanca neighborhood, eventually engulfing the entire restaurant and resulting in two deaths and 12 injuries, according to CNN. “Firefighters told me it was a ferocious fire in the way it started and the smoke it generated, and if the fire station wasn’t just 100 meters (around 330 feet) away, the number of fatalities could have been higher,” Madrid’s Mayor Jose Luis Martinez Almeida told a Spanish TV station. The flambé technique, in which alcohol is poured over a dish in order to briefly set it on fire, was allegedly the restaurant’s specialty.