From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published September 1, 2006 Fire 4$ Warehouse District: 1377 Annunciation Reservations: 566-1950. Lunch Tues.-Fri. Dinner Tues.-Sat. AE, DC, DS, MC, V. Fire was striking to look at, even in the limited glimpse we caught as we drove by, searching for a parking space on Annunciation Street. It's a big old blocky building that obviously has an interesting past. Inscriptions along its upper margins tell of its past as a fire and police station. We park in a neighborhood that was developing rapidly and very agreeably before the storm. After the storm, the new apartment complexes across the street became largely abandoned, as they still are. The look of the street has moved backwards in time about ten years, to that hostile aspect in the last years of its life as an industrial district. But all is well again when we scurried out of that and into the one large dining room, a space whose ceiling is so high that it could conceivably hold three floors of modern residential rooms. A ladder floats overhead. Windows give out onto the street and a small patio with a few more tables. My wife looks at me and smiles. This is the kind of building she's long dreamed of turning into a home, and she loves it. She loved the menu, too. Her kind of food. By her own admission, she is not a gourmet, and in fact thinks most of what we gourmets go crazy over is pure pretension. There is no pretension in the menu at Fire. It starts with dips, one of my wife's favorite things to make and eat. Six different ones, at that, and you can have assortments of them, with leaves of Belgian endive, tortilla chips, pita bread, and other dippers. The best was the chilpotle lemon hummus; the least interesting was the Maytag blue cheese cream, which was like a salad dressing. We had mahi-mahi fritters. That fish doesn't seem right for the fryer to me (it's a great grilling or broiling fish), but here they were, with a sauce of Boursin garlic cheese and crabmeat. One fritter: okay. Second fritter: eh, this needs some adjustments. (Maybe it's because I just got back from Italy, but I continue to find the combination of cheese and fish a bad idea.) On another visit, I had the sausage plate, ranging from spicy to smoky. One is made of duck! All good, with the mustardy dip you want when eating this. On a related note, they have an actual hot dog among the appetizers. It's tempura bettered with a spicy coating. Hunh? It might be better to start with a soup. The first sample of that course I had here was a very creamy mushroom soup, served in an enormous bowl--really, enough for two. The second was a curried tomato broth with lots of herbs and scallops. I'd forgotten the latter when I dived in, and when I fished out an enormous sea scallop on the spoon, my first reaction was that something from another plate had fallen in there by mistake. Then I remembered, and found the combination unusual but quite delicious. The entrees are where the real action here is, though. The best dishes I've had proceeded from the rotisserie, where they roast chickens and ducks. The chicken is utterly beyond reproach, tender and juicy and agreeably seasoned with enough pepper and garlic and herbs. They serve it by the half, with most of the bones still in place, the way God intended us to eat chicken. I think it's conceivable that, on a good night, when I left the twice-baked potato alone (as it should be), I could eat a whole chicken this way, and get both of the offered sauces. It's really that good. The duck is less thrilling, but still within the range of satisfying, especially in these times when finding more than just the duck breast or a confit of the leg in an entree is rare. They say that it's seasoned with Chinese five-spice powder, but that was indistinguishable to my palate. (That flavor is so distinctive that it always stands out.) Also here is a double-thick pork chop, grilled to juicy and sent out with some sweet-fruity garnishes and that twice-baked potato again. It will satisfy the chop appetite nicely. And over here is what my wife thinks is one of her favorite dishes. In fact, she liked it only one time, at Restaurant August, but because every chef in town now feels compelled to have it on the menu in order to seem hip (and--dirty secret--to have another very low food-cost item on the menu), she keeps seeing it, keeps ordering it, and has never liked it since. It's beef short ribs, which at its best is like the roast beef in an exceptionally good poor boy. The one here came out atop one large bone instead of across several cross-cut ones--which was unusual. It was just okay, but that's how this dish almost always is, anywhere. I wish I could report to you about a dish here that sounds fantastic. It's a seafood stew with orzo pasta (rice-shaped), with squid, shrimp, and mussels. The menu said it was curry, but the waiter said it didn't taste much like curry. A lot of people don't like curry, is probably why he said that. But I do, and it shooed me away from the dish. Next time. The bottom of the entree page is devoted to "flatbreads." Flatbread equals pizza, and I don't know why they call them that. They're baked in a stone oven and come topped with various deviations from the standard pizza configurations, and they're okay--although at fifteen to seventeen dollars a copy, they're not exactly price leaders. I've had the one made with chorizo and blue cheese and found it interesting, but it didn't wear well. I think these might make better appetizers, split among four people. Fire seems to be positioning itself in the price range between the neighborhood restaurants and the bistros. In a number of ways, it's in the same category as Sun Ray Grill, but a bit more expensive and in a mor interesting environment. And the wine list is better. Indeed, I found a lot of good bottles here, and with the duck I had the delicious BV Dulcet, which at $34 I thought was a good buy. (Certainly a good wine.) The bar makes first-class cocktails. And the wait staff is well versed in everything, enough so that they can engage in an intelligent conversation about both the wine and the food. Click here to return to today's edition. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.