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| - Tonight, The Keg was packed with over 1.5 hours of wait time. The Dominion Tavern was so packed they were not accepting walk-ins or reservations. The old go-to Reuben's had a line-up waiting all the way outside. So were in a bit of a spot for dining out after the movie and I was in no mood for fast food or anything deep fried. We were walking around looking when we spotted Firegrill. Never been, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try... that was the beginning of the end...
T H E G O O D
The restaurant looks impeccably clean and has a nice woody, loungy feel to it. And who doesn't enjoy leathery banquettes? As a steakhouse fanatic, it's the environment I enjoy. The manager's hiring practice of female staff indicates a strong interest in, how do I put it... the bouncy factor, not that there's anything wrong with that. Our server was polite and very friendly despite what follows. The Good ends here.
T H E B A D
The management cannot control his patrons. When young patrons go hog-wild like it's spring break, management has to step in before losing customers. It's better to have a few unhappy kids, than a bad reputation - more on this later.
If your wait-staff is all dressed to a tee, the manager should be dressed like he owns the place, not like a retail clerk at a Reno-Depot. If you're the boss, look the part.
T H E U G L Y
OK this is the part where you should get comfortable before going further. I'm about to go off on a rant, a diatribe, a disputation about basic rules of restoration and "foodology".
First of all... this, where I live, my island, is MONTREAL, not Val D'or. There's a steak spice mix named after my town. I think one can expect delicious steaks in Montreal; it's one of our culinary call-to-fame. Right up there with smoked meat, bagels & poutine. So if you dare call yourself a steakhouse and serve crap, maybe you should leave my island.
First my favourite quote from Bourdain that pretty much explains my views on restaurants and gastronomy.
"It says something about a person when you put chicken Caesar on the menu. You've crossed a line and you know it. It's the chef version of sucking Ron Jeremy's cock. If you do it late in your career, any notions of future stardom are usually pretty much out the window." -Anthony Bourdain, Medium raw.
Firegrill makes the atrocious, grotesque and egregious error in seating itself downtown and serving food I wouldn't make for myself on a boring night after work. I would sooner eat at McDonald's everyday and get more contentment from it. Hell I can do better with supermarket grub. People go to restaurants to eat what they can't have at home - mostly to get crispy crunchy food, or better food than they can't prepare.
I ordered the T-Bone... for connoisseurs the menu said. Connoisseurs call it a Porterhouse bitch, but I digress. It comes with soup or salad. Salads were the ubiquitous Caesar (see above) and of course the "chef's salad" whatever the fuck that means. I went for the soup, cream of broccoli. They forgot to mention it probably comes out of a can marked with the word Campbell's on it. It had the salt content of a canned soup and tasted like the 2 dollar soup I sometimes get at Tim Horton's (hey my expectations at Timmy's are different than when I dish out a lot of cash for a good meal.)
But I should have seen this coming when the bread came with butter in packets you have to unseal. Because whipping butter and serving it into a little ramequin is soooooooo much work right?
But it gets better... I mean worse...
I get my T-Bone steak and it's about I dunno, barely a centimetre thick, the kind of cheap-ass steak you get at your local IGA. This steak was un-aged. How can you tell you may ask? Well first, the purpose of aging meat is to release it of its water and of course secondly, make the meat tender which results in a steak that cuts easy and is flavour packed. This T-Bone had nothing flavourful and was boiled by all the water that was steamed out during the cooking process. I couldn't see any spices or seasoning. The steak was pale and looked like the kind of steak hospital cafeterias push out on those special occasion meals. Even after pouring enough salt to clog an artery on it, I still couldn't get any flavour out of it. That's of course WHEN I was able to cut a piece of meat out of it without hacking at it because of all the non-tenderness of the meat and all the "nerving". I stopped after 2 "bites".
Any steak connoisseur likes their steak, thick... really thick and will pay the big bucks to get it and get it right. The steak was barely grilled on one side, ungrilled on the other, conveniently faced down and looked and tasted boiled. And to make matters worse, there were metallic black spots on the steak indicating a dirty grille or tools. Unpleasant to say the least. And it was just served on a plate with nothing else. No herbs, no mushrooms, or grilled tomatoes, the regular, omnipresent go-tos. Just a plain unseasoned steak.
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