Fire Food and Drink has it's Mojo Back!

This past weekend Ben and I had a date night, and we decided to give Fire Food and Drink another try. The restaurant was buzzing at 8pm, the earliest we could get a reservation. We also noticed that they added some large macro photos of vegetables around the restaurant. We thought this was appropriate given their support of the North Union Farmers Market. While perusing the menu we decided to split a bunch of different things so we could get a better sampling of the menu.

We started with popovers with honey thyme butter. We were served three of them wrapped up in a napkin, and the table next to us asked what we had ordered because it looked delicious. They were very good and fresh from the oven--steam came out when we split them open. The honey thyme butter was a nice accompaniment, providing a subtle sweetness as well as an herby flavor.

Next up was a side of Dr.Katz's pickles (I can't help it, I love pickles!) and the strawberry, goat cheese and frisee salad. The pickles were unusual but very good - they were spicy and sour and oddly enough served well as a palate cleanser in between courses. The kitchen was kind enough to split the salad for us, so we both had a lovely plate presentation. I normally do not like frisee because of it's bitter flavor, but this was milder than most and combined with the dressing it was nothing short of amazing. The sweetness of the local strawberries, slight bitterness of the frisee, and tangyness from the goat cheese all balanced each other out to make a fantastic dish that left both Ben and I very impressed.

Lastly we order a pork chop with black beans and jicama salad. Again the kitchen split our plates ahead of time, and again we were in love with the dish. The chop was cooked perfectly, and the spice rub and crust were very tasty. The black beans offered a gentle spiciness but nothing too hot. Overall the dish was perfectly balanced, and in a word awesome.

We were both wowed by every dish, and had a excellent experience. The service as always was perfect. We were very surprised to find no split plate charge on our bill. This is a small thing, but we were surprised by this - considering that every split dish we had was split and plated as if each were a single dish in the kitchen.

Cleveland Foodie wrote in her last review that while the meal was enjoyable, it "wasn’t as good as I anticipated," and our last review of Fire was merely good. Ben's summary at the end of this visit, though, was "Fire has it's mojo back!"