Great food, great prices, great service! Yay!

One of the last places most people would expect to find a cool restaurant is tucked back into a quiet neighborhood. Au contraire, not in Portland my friend! This is where you'll find Firehouse. On NE Dekum St. just a couple blocks of MLK, Firehouse is located in; you guessed it, an old renovated firehouse. Located on a funny little corner, it's hard to miss, and once you've eaten there, the food isn't hard to miss either!

I've eaten at my share of swanky trendy hip places, and their bite is usually not as good as their bark....meaning what they actually do isn't as unique or good as what they say....

Firehouse is the opposite. The floorplan of an old firehouse doesn't exactly lend itself to the most ideal restaurant space in the world, but nevertheless the atmosphere is warm, rustic, contemporary and comforatable, and old photos of Portland firefighters long past lends a homey feel to the place. You can also watch chicken roast on a spit. Rad!

We started with fried cauliflower which was served with meyer lemon creme fraiche. Keep in mind that I think cauliflower is nasty. It was fantastic. I am now a cauliflower fan. It probably helped that it was fried. We also got some deep fried stuffed olives, and cheese with honey on it. I am always a fan of cheeses drizzled with honey after a particularly impressive morsel at Bar Mingo, luckily this did not dissappoint. However I'm not sure what the olives were supposed to be stuffed with, they looked empty to me...

We split a pizza, one of their signature items cooked in a homemade brick oven. The crust was perfect! And good pizza crust is hard to find. Chewy and flavorful and so good that the crust alone is as good as the pizza itself. At first I was wary of the sauce because it looked wet, it was a simple puree of tomatoes and olive oil, but in this case, simplicity didn't lend itself to chance. It was of course delicious as simple things made with good ingredients should be. I liked ithat Firehouse was an un-pretentious, unassuming atmosphere with a great menu that wasn't trying too hard.

The prices were reasonable and our waiter was personable, friendly and prompt. I overheard him at the next table talking about the wines and it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, which is obviously a very appealing quality in a waiter, and all too often seems to be lacking. A server not knowing their wines is like a bookseller not knowing who Kafka or Goethe is...like at Borders! But that's another story all in itself...