Last summer I taught
math in Boston, and one day I decided that I had to bring all my friends who taught with me to go to
Fire & Ice. They were rather surprised that I, being not a native of the
People's Republic of Cambridge, had already been there three times. Of course, I'd also only been in Boston for no more than two weeks in my life previous to that. It's probably safe to say that I'm just a
Fire & Ice fanatic.
*mgrin*
The reason Fire & Ice has its name is because there are basically two eating options (plus drinks and a bar). You can have the "
Ice", which is a fairly
dinky salad bar (unlimited portions, of course). You can also have the "
Fire" option, which like
DancinFool said, consists of several buffets of
vegetables,
meat and
seafood items, and then about 15 sauces of differing spiciness. They have both vrery
mild sauces and also ones that are actually spicy. As somebody who enjoys spicy foods, I would also like to point out that
Fire & Ice carries a respectable
hot sauce at their tables:
Melinda's.
Once you have thrown all the ingredients into the bowl you want, and the sauce into a small accompanying bowl, you take your order up to the big circular grill in the middle of the restaurant. There are usually 3-5 "
Knights of the Round" (or so say their
T-shirts because they all work at one of the hugest round grills you'll ever see) working in the middle who throw your food onto the grill along with the sauce. Once it's cooked, they put it into a new bowl and hand it back to you. When you get back to your table you have
rice and
flour tortillas to eat your bowl of hot
goodness with.
Not to bring in
non-meatatarian viewpoints, but they have a separate cooking area for people who choose not to partake in the
meatier items. Because of the popularity of
Fire & Ice, getting food may take upwards of a half hour on a really busy night (weekend nights more often than not). However, not many people eat vegetarian (or haven't been there enough to know that it can be a good choice even for
meatatarians) and so you can usually walk right up and have your food cooked right away. That's the secret to quick eating at
Fire & Ice. Because some people will not eat meat, it can be common to be confused over whether your friends who are not eating meat are "vegetarian" or just too
lazy to wait. This leads to things being overheard in line like "Wait are you vegetarian?
The last girl I dated was a vegetarian. We couldn't go anywhere and so it just didn't work out.".
This restaurant is so incredible that one of my
good friends who wanted
mementos from Boston requested that I
gank one of their menus for her. The menus at
Fire & Ice are very amusing because they are simply one page: back and front. The fact that they have menus is funny because the only thing you can order there is a single trip to the buffet or multiple trips. Other than that, there's nothing else. The menu is more of an
instruction manual for how to get your food cooked rather than any sort of choice on what you can order.
You may have seen other places that let you pick
ingredients, throw them in a bowl, and then have somebody cook them for you, but they're not the same. For example,
Big Bowl is one place that sort-of allows you to do this if you order the "Create your own Big Bowl". If you live in
St. Louis, the
International Mongolian BBQ (on Olive and 141) will do the same thing with fewer ingredients and a
Chinese restaurant atmosphere complete with standard
buffet items. There is also another restaurant whose name escapes me that I went to
randomly with my
fambly while on
vacation. However, none of these places matches up to the atmosphere, food, and total
experience that is...
Fire & Ice.