Admittedly, I was 'fired up' to visit Fired Up, I had been walking the streets of Port Credit since the day that suspect pizza joint shut down and the first piece of reclaimed wood was hung outside (plus like, FIRE, so... my kinda place).
I was skeptical about paying them a visit as I noticed a lot of friends and family reviews (all 5 stars) within days of opening, only to see the true consumer experience begin to show over time. At the time of this review, Fired Up sits at a 1.5 star average with many of their reviews coming from reputable locals, that said most restaurants who succeed take feedback and make adjustments to improve and I was confident that this would be the case here.
If you haven't heard of Fired Up, it's a really neat concept, open fire kitchen, viewable from the street, and the menu consists of varieties of meat (both domestic and wild - as well as fish) done with big flavours. Looking at the wine list and the menu I would almost ascertain that they might be going for a sort of South American BBQ inspired restaurant. We arrived and despite the threat of poor weather we asked for a patio seat and were taken care of right away.
The drink menu is limited in my opinion. Despite the rest of Port Credit following the craft cocktail trend, Fired Up appears to stick to a mostly beer and wine beverage menu. My observation was the lack of diversity in their alcohol selection. There are very few beer options here and the limited wine options seem to all be from the same wineries depending what country you order from (ex: Argentina wines: 3-4 options, just all by the same winery). It just appears to not be carefully curated, more like an obvious stock selection provided by the distributor, a house somellier may help to address this lack of diversity. If your focus is going to be beer and wine you should do it well.
Looking through the menu it's a carnivore's dream, rib-eyes to ribs, venison, to chicken supreme, wild game chilli, jumbo prawns, octopus, squid and on and on! My fiancee doesn't eat red meat, but she'll kill shrimp any day and went with the jumbo prawns with a side caesar. I was so torn, mostly due to not eating all day, but after much-pained deliberation, I asked for a House salad to start followed by a half rack of ribs with the house macNcheese as my side. What diet?
The house salad was the first thing to arrive and it looked suspect from the moment it hit the table. Glistening too much and the lettuce looked limp. At first I thought that maybe they had put too much salad dressing on it, but then upon further inspection, many of the leaves were actually black and mushy as if they were expired. I brought this up to our server to which she said that they had this issue when they UNTHAWED THE LETTUCE. Frozen salad? What? That cannot be real. I pressed on in order to confirm this face and without skipping a beat she confirmed. The salad went back and they substituted a caesar salad for it with no questions asked, which was good.
My other note for this place was our server. With regards to overall attentiveness, she was hit or miss, often standing and chatting with other servers or taking long intervals between completing/remembering steps of service (topping up waters, taking orders, drinks, etc). In addition, this might be how they're trained her but we both found her to be very pushy on the appetizer and drink orders. We had just sat down and her first question was what appetizers we were having. Even throughout our meal we felt really pressured to buy and buy more. It wasn't a comfortable dining experience for the most part.
After 50/50 service and the salad incident, my experience was coloured pretty negatively at this point. That was until our mains came out. They totally redeemed themselves here! Our mains were massive in portion size and were beautifully plated. My ribs were incredibly tender and the sauce was delicious. The side of baked beans were also delicious and then the mac N Cheese! So creamy, and so many big flavours. I was truly impressed by this. My fiancee had ordered jumbo prawns, and while the server did not mention that they were spicy (my fiancee is very sensitive to spice, so a heads up either on menu or a mention by the staff might be something to warn people about) they were amazing, plump, and perfectly cooked. Both of these dishes are a must try in my opinion.
It's early days for Fired Up, I can see how and where others have reviewed them more harshly. There are some bright spots here but there are an equal number of growing pains for this new business that need to be addressed in order for them to become the 5 star restuarant they aspire to be.
Eatcrest Out!