FIRE + ICE
50 Church Street, Cambridge
(Harvard Square)
(617) 547-9007
Restaurant reviewed 05/08/98 by Sheryl Julian
Three couples at the next table look so young we wonder if the signatures on their drivers' licenses are still wet. The young men, in very conservative tuxedos, might be trying out for the role Jimmy Stewart played in "The Philadelphia Story." Their dates, appropriately, resemble early Katharine Hepburn. They're on their way to Harvard's Eliot House annual formal party, and though Fire + Ice is an unlikely place for them to begin their evening, from our vantage, it's perfect. They add a festive element to the place.
Not that Fire + Ice needs more festivity. It's hopelessly confusing at first. A couple of a certain age on their way out one night was asked if their meal was good; their reply: "It was a lot of trouble to get our meal."
Therein lies the adventure of eating at Fire + Ice. It calls itself "an improvisation grill." What this means is that you take a bowl and go shopping in a "market area," picking out slices of pork loin, for instance, then perhaps some broccoli florets, a few snow peas, some shiitakes, sprouts, garlic and ginger, and maybe teriyaki sauce.
You proceed to the center of the restaurant, to an 8-foot round flat-top grill (picture a small Ferris wheel on its side). Several cooks are waiting to put your selections together. They tip the bowl carefully onto the hot grill and the food spills out in a long line in the order in which you stacked your ingredients. Although the grill looks incredibly hot, it takes about five minutes for your stir-fried order to return.
But the watching is fun. You lean on a counter around the edge of the grill, and other diners are leaning beside you - sometimes two dozen at a time. The restaurant seats 180, including a patio.
The pork stir-fry with teriyaki sauce was enormously successful. On another night I chose slices of sirloin, andouille sausage, red and green bell peppers, some hot peppers, and took a little bowl of charred onion Bourbon sauce (food goes into one bowl, sauce in another, and you have a tray for carrying these). The Bourbon sauce, rated 2 fiery stars, was intense. And the meat was too chewy. And every other ingredient tasted like Bourbon sauce.
This is the problem here. Unlike ordinary stir-fries, where the vegetables retain their integrity because they go into a wok in many stages, Fire + Ice's food has a homogenous taste of the strong sauce. So if you choose squid and swordfish and black bean sauce, you'll get predominant black bean taste.
You have to create your own meal, and make your own mistakes. One diner cross-fertilized cultures by adding ginger and sprouts to a Creole-style dish. Another overdid chilies by adding a very hot sauce to a dish that already contained too many sliced chilies. So you learn as you go - and you can get refills.
On the way back to your table, you can stop by a salad bar with beautiful lettuces (mesclun, leaf lettuces, and romaine) and a handful of dressings. Regrettably, the plain one contains raspberry vinegar; it's too sweet and too aromatic. Caesar was a better choice.
Once you sit down, you'll get rice and warm tortillas to accompany your choice.
At $13.75 per person, Fire + Ice is over the Cheap budget. But the price includes unlimited trips to the grill and the salad bar, so you're getting at least two courses for your money.
Price doesn't include desserts, which were unremarkable (make that stale) except for an intense chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. You won't have room anyway.
The place is already packed, mostly with a young crowd. The formal Eliot House preppies might have looked out of place, but on their dress-down days, they'd fit right in.
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