Fire & Ice Restaurant & Bar, 312 Market St. , is aptly named — as it is an exercise in different sides of the spectrum, usually with good results.
The establishment is both a restaurant and a live-music venue/party space with a menu that features exotic modern Vietnamese/Thai cuisine, as well as American bar food. The décor is ultra- modern and gives off a hip nightclub vibe. And, if you can stop drinking and dancing long enough to take a look at the menu, there are some pleasant surprises.
With all the exotic dishes available, we really didn’t have any interest in bar food, so you’ll have to let us know if their wings, sliders and quesadillas are on point. But the Asian dishes for the most part were vibrant and exciting.
The shaky beef salad ($12) had tender pieces of sirloin that were especially tasty when combined with the watercress, onion and garlic and black-pepper dressing. The Kal Bi lettuce wraps ($9) had a very bright and spicy flavor that demands repeat visits.
Vegetarians can rejoice with dishes like the wilted watercress ($6) and the Shanghai tips ($5), which scratch that veggie itch well enough but aren’t as satisfying as the meat and fish dishes.
Seafood enthusiasts will find plenty to enjoy, such as the mung bean crepe ($12), which was overflowing with tasty shrimp, sprouts, mushrooms, carrots and daikon. The salted prawns ($15) were addictively tasty and crunchy.
For all the bold Asian flavors and influences on the menu, Fire & Ice kind of blinked when it came to its rice and noodle dishes. While the Thai basil rice ($9) and the pad Thai shrimp ($12) were solid and slightly a cut above take-out, they could have been more adventurous in the spicing, ingredients and presentation, especially on the pad Thai, in which key elements like sauce, peanuts and veggies didn’t seem to be present in a decent-enough ratio, compared with the shrimp and noodles. That kind of streamlining of those dishes is understandable if they are trying to cater to the bar-food crowd, but it can be a slight shortcoming if someone is expecting something on par with the other Asian dishes on the menu.
But overall, Fire & Ice has plenty of Vietnamese/Thai hotness to stand out among the many other restaurants on Market Street competing for your attention.