Fire Street Food: Not packing the heat

Like books, you cannot judge restaurants on appearance alone. Fire Street Food on 13 East Perry Street is a shining example.

Everything inside is so perfect and so hip it hurts. When I see an interior that is so nice, I automatically assume that the restaurant is so successful, they can afford top of the line everything.

This place is so cute inside

On Friday night, Mike, Ingela and I sauntered in to Fire Street Food at about 10 p.m. and there was a line. Good sign.

We learned two things standing in that line. One, they ran out of sushi by 8 p.m. that night, and three, despite boasting many flavors of bubble tea, by10 p.m. on a Friday, they were out of a few of them. Bad sign.

Traditionally, I order things I know, but this blog has made me step outside of many of my normal boundaries. So I decided to try the Laos Egg Noodle Soup with braised pork.

My Laos pork soup

When the manager dropped my soup off at the table, he asked, “Do you want hot sauce?” I agreed

and proceeded to make my once clear soup a pleasant pink with the addition of about 10 shakes of Sriracha. And while I could handle the heat, the taste of the soup was just not good.

There were a few pieces of pork that tasted like the pork from fried rice at a Japanese restaurant, there was an unidentifiable floating substance that I shared with my dinner companions and they also had no idea what it was. It looked like tofu, but it tasted like meat.

Did I mention how cute the inside of this place is?

Mike's Gang Dang Gai

Mike had the “Gang Dang Gai” with chicken. The menu description lists this as a curry, coconut milk, basil entrée. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, this was also not very tasty. Mike also ordered a green tea flavored bubble tea that he didn’t enjoy. Seriously, as I’ve mentioned before, Mike eats and drinks everything. For him to not finish a meal or a $5 bubble tea, you know something is wrong.

I tasted his meal and I’m sure I’ve had much better curry in at least two other restaurants in the city.

Ingela's winner chicken sandwich

Finally, of course, we laughed at Ingela when she ordered an American chicken sandwich. Of course, I tasted said chicken sandwich. Of course, said sandwich rocked my world and I ate half of her dinner. It almost tasted like a Louisiana Po-Boy with the same messy and delicious factors. To top it off, her French fries were banging.

So three Americans walk into an Asian restaurant and the one who orders the American chicken sandwich has the best dinner. The end.