Fire & Ice

Fire & Ice

What they advertise on the internet:

What's on the menu at FiRE + iCE? Whatever you want! Our market is stocked and re-stocked throughout the day with fresh vegetables, seafood, chicken, beef, udon noodles, pasta and more. All you have to do is take a bowl and pile it high with whatever you want. We even have a hamburger bar, with fresh ground beef and all the fixins'.After you decide on what you want, choose from one of our sauces, like Greenberg's Teriyaki, Fajita and more. Take our sauce and your bowl up to the grill and watch as our chefs prepare your meal for you. We'll even bring warm tortillas and rice to your table for you to enjoy with your meal.


Our experience:

After a great day at the festival on Saturday, we decided to continue our “southside” outing and invite some friends out for dinner. Our choice was Fire & Ice and what was even better, no one in our group had ever been – which thrilled me, I would have their honest opinion and reaction to this restaurant!!

We arrive at Fire & Ice and there was a good crowd - - the atmosphere was buzzing and people were all over the place. Our wait was not long at all which was very surprising and even greater because we were all starving !!

We are seated and happily greeted by a server. And, of course, we were asked that dreaded question, “Have you ever dined here before?” We all answered “no” and off we went for a guided tour of the different food stations. I couldn't believe how much food they had – and simply just displayed like a buffet style restaurant but uncooked. As our tour and instructions were coming to an end, we were handed a salad sized bowl, not a soup bowl, a salad bowl and we were told, “Now just put your different food selections in this and take it to the Chef’s and they will cook it from there.”

Since I wasn’t prepared for this type of dinner service – I asked the server one simple question, “Do you have a menu or something that suggest or tells us what to combine for the different dishes?” And, the answer was "NO" which did not surprise me.

With bowl in hand, I stood and starred at the food selection and tried to figure out what I wanted to eat, what I had a craving for and where in the world I needed to start at. I decided to check the meats out first – the selection ranges from Chicken, beef and all types of seafood. I picked chicken as my meat and only because the seafood that was displayed did not look appetizing, at all. What I believe to have been scallops, was sitting in a thick milky substance. The shrimp appeared mushy looking and the fish looked like last weeks fish selection and smelled like it. There were a few other selections of meats which I didn’t even think twice about and I honestly thought I would be safe with the chicken and worse case scenario, they do have a “hamburger” bar.

Now, time to pile on the vegetables. The selection of veggies range from onions, green peppers, garlic, nuts, broccoli, snow peas, tomatoes, black olives, roasted peppers, mushrooms, squash, zucchini, etc and some different types of pastas. I am still clueless on what I am trying to construct as my meal, so I just pick out the best looking veggies, a little pasta, a bit more chicken and few more veggies here and there. How can I go wrong with chicken, veggies & pasta.

Next is the sauce bar……..there are several types of sauces to “compliment” and add to your meal – from zesty to sweet, the choice is yours. So, my selection on the sauce for my mound of food was a fajita sauce, which I guess means it’s a Mexican tasting sauce. But, at this point, I didn’t even know what to call my dish; Oriental, American, Mexican...... much less what sauce would be good on it !!

I am finally done with the constructing (and destruction) of my meal and decided to wait a moment on my friends before heading to the chefs cook bar. Secretly, I am really just hoping that their bowls look just as disastrous and huge as mine – but, there’s nothing like standing in the middle of the restaurant balancing a bowl of uncooked chicken and chicken juice soaked veggies & pasta in order to just see what they had come up with.

Finally, they are done and we all gasp and mumble different things at the sight of what all we had created and needless to say, our creations did not look very appetizing but hey, we hoped that the Chefs would do a better job than us. We dropped off our bowls at the cook bar and we headed back to our table to enjoy our cocktails and apparently to indulge in the plain rice that was waiting on us.

Our meals arrive and I must say, these meals were not appealing to the eye. But, looks aren’t everything and we all dove in. Normally, within our group of friends and our outings, it is always an exciting and very talkative time for all of us, but this night and during these particular moments, I do believe we were at a loss for words.



My chicken dish was extremely over cooked and dry, I found it to be tasteless and bland. The "look" of the seafood didn't stop some in my group from piling it in their bowl, which one commented, "This is like eating a rubber band." One other had chosen beef and he referenced to his "beef stir fry" as to being like a leather belt cut up into small pieces and sauteed in soy sauce.



Our server came by to check on us and she asked about our meal, we did explained to her how we were not so-thrilled with it and she enlightened us that we could go back up to the food bar and “try again." Now, the "try again" comment would have wonderful, if the first attempt had been successful but why in the world would anyone want to recreate something so wasteful..... we requested and paid the check and never looked back.



Our overall experience and thoughts of Fire & Ice: I must take into account that some people might enjoy this type of restaurant and this type of food. But, personally, I feel that when we go out to dinner, my expectations are a bit higher. I do expect food to be presented, cooked and prepared better than what I could have done at home. This restaurant is somewhat inexpensive for the amount of food you are offered but it is still food and it must be edible.
We have no desire to give this restaurant another try and I am thankful that there were some other places still open that night !!