Fireside Restaurant & Lounge

I've driven by this place hundreds of times and finally decided to give it a try. My experience was not bad enough for me to run screaming from the restaurant, but I was left unimpressed and underwhelmed at every turn.

Food-wise, I ordered what is advertised as their specialty - the prime rib. I'm not sure what I received on my plate, but it was certainly not prime rib. To be honest, it looked more like a poorly-trimmed, too-thin ribeye.

The restaurant was practically deserted, yet the service was extremely slow. The waitress never came to check on how I was doing, and I ended up sitting for 10-15 minutes waiting for my check.

If there is any bright spot to be taken from this restaurant, it is that the prices are reasonable. However, I don't like paying any amount of money, even a comparatively small amount for mediocre food. Thus, I would not see myself visiting this restaurant again.

Haven't been to the Fireside in probably 8-10 years. We figured we would give it a try to see if it was still in as poor shape as last, or if it had regained some of it's once revered scrumptious eats.

So we finally got drinks and ordered. Got a shrimp cocktail to share, a bowl of french onion to share, and we both ordered ribeyes, she ordered medium rare, I ordered more rare than medium.

Shrimp came out. Not cold, not cool. Warm. What a poor attempt at de-veining them at that. They must have just thawed them under hot water to serve them. After 2 I couldn't muster the appetite to eat any more.

Soup came out. It looked good, until further spoon inspection I realized that the outlook was not good. There were just chunks of chopped onion barely cooked under the bread and cheese. Apparently their french onion soup is beef broth with some quick chopped onion thrown in and then expected to cook and fully caramelize under the broiler or microwave for a minute. She ate the cheese of the top of the bowl, and i ate a few spoonfuls of broth sans onion.

Salads came out. Blue cheese looked chunky. The lettuce looked like it was cut yesterday with a metal knife. It was crisp enough but the browning edges is really off putting. The dressing was cold and delicious but I assume straight out of food service containers.

Great, can't WAIT to get the steaks. The sinking feeling we had made a huge mistake.

Out came dinner....The waitress started with..."here's your steaks, cut them and let me know if they are ok." I thought great she wants to make sure they aren't to rare. But then she added "they look overcooked." Oh.
So we cut them open, and they were WAY overcooked. Mine was well, hers was medium well. I can have them cook you new ones. Yeah thats when you get your food spit in. No, thats ok, we'll manage with these thanks.

So we got a few fork-fulls in and out came the cook. He says, "I just wanted to see how your steaks were, the flank those came off wasn't very good to cook with, and being they aren't aged, they don't cook well." Let me get this straight it's the STEAKS fault you couldn't cook them right? You have GOT to be f&^%ing kidding me right. Nope. He was serious, he then said "I just got another flank out and hopefully it will be better." Outstanding. I suppose it was the broccoli's fault that it was overcooked and mushy as well? Spectacular.

But the part that really pisses me off. We ordered ribeyes, and we got served NY strips. At that point it wasn't worth the 5 dollar difference to bitch. Do I look that stupid?

I get fresh steaks from the grocer ALL the time and they cook beautifully.

It pisses me off to no extent when I go out to eat and I could have done better at home for half the money.