The Firehouse – Review (Spoiler: its really good)
I went to The Firehouse last week with friends and the food was AMAZING. The Firehouse has only been open for about a month and is located next door to Ramona. Ramona (Detroit-style pizzeria and margarita bar) itself only opened relatively recently – and The Firehouse have the same people behind it.
The Firehouse is on Swan Street in the Ancoats area of city centre Manchester. Its next door to Ramona and is opposite the street food hall/market Mackie Mayor.
The Firehouse is located in a former (car) garage. The idea behind it is more of a slow-paced, relaxed venue and is inspired by owners’ travels to Ibiza and California. So as well as a nice big open building, you get “slow fires open kitchen) i.e. piri piri chicken, and also music from a DJ.
Of course the main thing is the chicken but some of the best things I ate were the sides. Its all sort of a tapas style (small plates). The piri piri chicken comes in 2 sizes – the breast or half a chicken. Between 5 of us, we ordered 3 x half chicken and several sides. We went for the potatoes, greens, roast squash, slaw, hummus and stracciatella.
The chicken was lovely. Nice flavour and not dry – which is always the risk with chicken. But since this is the main thing they do, you expect it to be good. I must had breast meat but also had a drumstick which was extra juicy. (Mouth is salivating writing this!).
To go with the chicken, and everything else, we got some sauces – a couple piri piri sauces and an aioli sauce.
On to the sides next and wow. The crushed roast fingerling potatoes (with summer truffle mayo, parmesan reggiano and chives) was SO good. SO SO good. I thought they were delicious – some of the best potatoes I’ve had. F**king delicious. The taste, the smell, the texture.
Another stand out sides dish was the hummus and pita. The bread is incredible and combined with the hummus. Yum! The stracciatella wasn’t half bad either!
I also did like the other sides. I am not forgetting about them. But the potatoes, pita and hummus were on another level. Some of the things in the sides I was not 100% sure what they were – like the Green which had various different veg , herbs, seeds in it but I was not sure what they were but just that it tasted good. It reminded me of the first time I went to Elnecot, also in Ancoats area – and also does sort of “smaller dishes” and some things I was not too sure what it was but just knew it tasted really good.
For drink I had Firehouse Pilsner and also had a Caipirinha cocktail – which is Brazil’s national cocktail.
As I mentioned earlier, The Firehouse is inspired by travels in Ibiza (and California) so that’s why there was a DJ playing. Maybe/probably just old but it was a bit on the loud side. Not too loud of you’re just chilling, having a drink but not if you are talking. But I get that its going for the Ibiza/California vibe! This does not effect my overall thoughts on The Firehouse or its final score. It still gets a 5/5 for me.
(I used to think that giving 5/5 for somewhere is almost a non-possible sort of thing as 5/5 is “perfect” – and nothing is 100% perfect. But The Firehouse is very very good. So that’s a 5/5).
(The team behind The Firehouse are co-founders of Albert’s Schloss. They also launched things like Trof, Deaf Institute and Gorilla, although recently Gorilla and Deaf Institute were sold to Tokyo Industries).