beautiful summer patio lunch. this is the perfect patio to sit on in summer to enjoy a delicious lunch. i'll keep this review to the point - about the food and service.
the menu selections are great and made for some difficult choices. i opted to have two appetizers -- to have a cup of their homemade daily soup (red lentil with pork) and their duck confit lettuce wraps. the portions were perfect and for roughly $4 and $8, respectively, the prices were on par for what i'd expect. not to mention, interesting flavours and decent portions. the only comment i have for the lettuce wrap is that the romaine lettuce wasn't soft enough to actually 'wrap' so something like butter lettuce, bibb lettuce, or even iceberg might be better.
the other two had sandwiches - the beef dip and the pulled pork wrap. both raved about their sandwiches -- which were mammoth-sized portions (okay maybe not that big, but you get the picture) withexcellentcaesar salads. yes, you can find a caesar salad on just about any menu but not every restaurant attempts to make their own dressing which they do, and do well, at fireside.
we three decided to share the dessert sampler for two which had small bites of four different desserts: a "gin and tonic" ice with passionfruit mousse, cream puff with citrus-saffron scented whipped cream, flourless chocolate cake w/ amaretto icecream and cheesecake w/ blueberry sauce. the gin and tonic ice w/ passionfruit mousse was amazing. it absolutely made my tastebuds do a little dance and i would have been happy to have just that for dessert. everything else was quite delicious with the flourless chocolate cake being my #2 choice.
another thing i really appreciate about the fireside (okay, a few things): we only drank water, and despite a fairly busy patio our server was attentive and made sure our glasses were never empty. for some reason, as simple a concept it is to keep a glass of water filled, many restaurants are not good at keeping this in mind. also, when our dessert was brought out, the server who brought it (not our original server) explained each of the desserts to us so we knew what we were having. though i would said mostly self-explanatory, it was still a nice thing to have done.
lastly, this is one of the few restaurants that actually has comment cards for patrons to fill out. i am not sure if there is some sort of reward for servers who get good feedback, or if it's just a part of fireside's authentic reason for wanting to maintainexcellentfood & service, but i really like that they do want to know how they are doing. i appreciate that they appreciate the customer's voice, rather than just wanting people to get out the door especially if unhappy. luckily for us, we were very happy with our experience and look forward to enjoying another meal with them again.