The Two Possible Ends of the World

I spent the day in Boston with my girlfriend yesterday. Apart from being goddamn exhausted from the train-switches from Revere to Harvard, walking around Harvard, walking to Newbury Street, walking to Downtown Crossing, going back to Harvard for dinner, and then making the subway trek back to Revere before driving my ass back to Salem, it was an entirely fantastical afternoon/evening. The evening, as mentioned, ended with dinner at a place that presumably stole their name from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems.

Fire and Ice is an "improvisational grill." This terminology worried me. Food should not be improv'd, unless you're lost in the woods or are really intoxicated and it's still only really acceptable if you're lost in the woods. But I was hungry, tired, and willing to try something new. A lot of my friends go there, but they tend to mention how it's a great place to go and drink yourself stupid, so I was never aware of the oddity of its serving practices.

The way things are done is you get a bowl and go through this buffet line. There are vegetables, meats, and all the fixin's for what you could want with it--and its all raw. The meat ranges from top sirloin to shark, pulled pork to bacon. There's cilantro, baby corn, carrots, potatoes, and salad pieces. Then, after strolling through the raw buffet, you pick your sauce, which is anything from spicy bourbon and barbecue and teriyaki to sweet and sour, thai, honey mustard. You get a little container of the sauce you want, or mix them if you're interested, and bring them to the giant grill top in the center of the restaurant. They cook all the food together, then add the sauce at the appropriate time, and then give it back to you and you eat it.

Now, there are flaws with the system, that since it is a buffet, all sorts of people are walking through the line of meats and picking some up, putting some back, and the idea of that sounds kind of gross. But the place itself was really atmospheric the food was really, really good. The red potato, top sirloin, pulled pork, and baby corn with a bit of bourbon sauce mixed with BBQ was near enough to the highlight of the entire day. And it's all-you-can-eat, so you can go up and fill another bowl of ingredients before paying the monstrous bill and leaving.

Ah, yes, the bill. This whole adventure costs $16.95 per person, plus the cost of a drink if you want one. I had gotten a Fire & Ice Tea, having wanted to drink from those Long Island lemons, and to be honest, it wasn't a very good Long Island Iced Tea. If I ever go back (which I would love to do, because the food really was awesome), I would do so on the college nights where for college students with a valid ID, the price is only $11.95. The full price meal, as good and interesting as the whole thing is, barely feels worth the near $20 price, because despite being all-you-can-eat, the bowls don't hold a lot of food, and it's all relatively filling food so you won't be going up more than two--maybe three times--if you're super hungry.

These places are popping up everywhere, it seems. The first one is in Cambridge (where I went), then some in Rhode Island, New York, Alabama, another one in Boston, California, and another one is on its way to Cali. If you find yourself near one and have a ton of money, I would seriously suggest taking the chance.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor