Fire & Stone (Westfield)

Heard about the cocktails at Fire & Stone and a girlfriend and I turn up enthusiastically hoping to have a try for ourselves. Very disappointed, we sat at the bar in clear eyeshot of the bar staff and were ignored for a full 15minutes as we were overlooked and even had one of the rude bar men choose to pay attention to a couple of diners who stood behind us. Very disappointed, would not recommend!
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Monica
Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Thursday, November 19, 2009

We chose Fire & Stone because the other food emporia were very busy and had long queues. Fire & Stone didn't look that busy and had no queue at all. That should have set alarm bells ringing!

The member of staff who greeted us was friendly and gave us a choice of 2 or 3 tables and the waitress was polite but I feel swooped in for the drinks order a little too fast before I'd managed to get settled and have a proper look at the menu.

We ordered the garlic oil and mozzarella pizza base sort of garlic bread option as a starter to share and it was very greasy and not garlicky at all.

As a main my friend ordered the traditional sounding Casablanca. We were both incredibly surprised to find that the Casablanca didn't have a tomato sauce base, it was just a slightly cold cheesy white sauce on a doughy greasy base topped with blue cheese, mushrooms, more cheese and a tiny smattering of crushed walnuts. The mushrooms were alleged to be sautéed in garlic butter but again there was no garlic to speak of. The pizza didn't look good as it was pale and blotchy looking, a bit like the face of the moon, and it didn't taste particularly good either as the overall taste was one of pure greasy fat where it should have been a great combination of the saltiness of the Roquefort, the garlic of the mushrooms and the sweetness of the walnuts.

I ordered the Lombok pizza as in theory and on paper it sounded really interesting. Alas, in reality, it wasn't very nice at all. It arrived at the table with a pool of liquid on its surface indicating to me that the oven wasn't hot enough and the peppers and spring onion had sweated. This meant that the already soft and doughy base was sopping wet. This sort of "fusion" just doesn't work. Looking at the menu again now I realise that it's all over the place. It doesn't know what it's trying to say. Is it a case of "Hey, we're crazy, we don't play by the rules, we can put wonton prawns, mezze and pizza on the same menu, who's to stop us?" because if it is, someone, please please put an end to it.

NB: Despite the dishes and wine being pretty reasonably priced I am putting a zero. The food was quite simply not worth any money at all.
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Dolly
Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Monday, October 12, 2009

Pleasant enough venue, but menu is ridiculously complicated with far too many exotic type pizzas, side salad is tiny (as mentioned below - one anchovy) and the pizza is very sub-pizza express, even with a two for a tenner deal I'd avoid.
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Londonglen
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 5
Friday, October 09, 2009

Cramped seating, poor decor, poor service, but worst of all, a menu that simply does not work - how can you serve roast potatoes on a pizza?? curry on a pizza?

For a restaurant only serving pizza's, you'd expect a top quality base and ingredients but the base was so small and looked like something they'd oven cooked from goodfellas.

It's inexpensive but you know why and with it being at the far end of Westfield - I'd expect this place to close once everyone has tried it - as that is all it is, a novelty idea that you have to try, but you would never return.
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pomey
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 3
Wednesday, October 07, 2009

I'm afraid this place didnt leave me a great impression.

Our waitress was friendly but nonetheless quite amateurish and the general attitude towards the customers is a bit too unformal to my taste ( a'ight, guys ??).

Anyway, we didnt really get the starters we ordered but let's not be fussy, it doesnt really matters. They offered to bring the correct dish but it was a bit late..

And by the way, there is a spelling mistake on your menu - it says " Caesar Salad with anchovies " as it should indeed say " Caesar Salad with its anchovy " for only one was in there.

It's also very annoying that you have to wave at the waitress everytime you want your glass to be filled in with water...

We finally got our pizzas but there again it was another disappointment. The crust was extremely dry and practically uneatable. As well as the meat on the pizza - tasteless and overcooked.

If i took the time to write this review, it's just because this canteen is just not doing the job for the shocking prices it displays.
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arnogrand
Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 2 | Value for money 1
Sunday, March 29, 2009

As the previous reviewer said, the decor in this restaurant is very nice and I found the staff to be very welcoming and friendly. However, I thought the food was awful. We ordered the duck spring rolls to share as a starter, the duck was more like a squishy duck paste- not very nice at all. As for the pizzas, well I'm a big pizza fan and have eaten fantastic pizzas all around the world. Their menu is strange, a huge range of pizzas with very odd combinations of ingredients on them. I picked something as close to a margherita as I could find, my partner chose a Capetown and my nephew chose a Napoli (minus the anchovies). When they finally arrived, they were very small and I thought the base was horrible, it did not taste like stone-baked pizza at all, it was spongy and had a weird crumbly/grainy texture. My partner's pizza was smothered in what he described as corned beef and there was a lump of oregano right in the middle of it, it had not been spread around the pizza at all. My nephew seemed to enjoy his more than we enjoyed ours though! I don't think I'll eat a fire and stone pizza again, there are much better places to get a good stone-baked pizza in london for a better price!
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Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 3
Sunday, December 14, 2008

Very smart-looking restaurant, quite noisy despite being empty (music?). This being my first Fire and Stone experience I was stunned to discover they will not add the topping of your choice to a pizza - you can only choose from a very limited selection of additional toppings on the menu, DESPITE a whole range of toppings evidently being theoretically available since they appear on the numerous pizzas. More stunned to discover the reason, from the waiter - 'the chefs feel adding any other toppings will ruin the taste of the pizza and that you can better enjoy the pizzas as they are already on the menu'. ??? I must have missed the point of pizzas. Amazing - Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck will amiably incorporate requests but Fire and Stone - empty apart from us - cannot. The pizza eventually arrived, all 8.5 inches (diameter) of it. Below average.

In conclusion - a wonderful manager who seemed slightly embarrassed by the topping situation, and who, unprompted, went to lengths to discover how to negotiate the Westfield maze to retrieve our car; excellent waiting staff with a great sense of humour; gorgeous restaurant; totally bizarre kitchen rules & below average, rather small pizzas and dessert (we tried the panacotta).
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TheOtherFoodie
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 5
Tuesday, November 25, 2008