Fire & Stone

Saturday 19th March. My wife and I took our two grandchildren aged 11 and 13, to the Covent Garden Fire & Stone. The pizzas were awful. Poor quality toppings. Grossly overpriced. As for the drinks, I paid £3.50 for a half pint of lager!!! I cannot go into too much detail as I am trying to find an e-mail address, other than for bookings, for Fire & Stone, to report on my grandaughters state of health following our regrettable visit.
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Grandpa Peter
2 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 0
Monday, March 21, 2011

We went to this restaurant for a friends birthday having heard a few good reviews but in all honesty, they managed to ruin pizza. The toppings especially the meat ones ruin the pizzas, the pasta were marginally ok at best and the starters were disappointing. Desserts managed to savage a little bit of their reputation but weren't amazing. Overall a pretty horrid meal and not worth the money at all. Service wise no complaints at all.
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Vibi
4 Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 1
Saturday, March 12, 2011

First time visit and very disappointing experience.

I booked a table for me and my dad for luch time with the Taste London card at the Covent Garden branch.

When we turned up, both members of staff at the door were indifferent and rather rude, we were "waved" to follow a speeding ahead seating hostess to our table.

Restaurant seemed messy & disorganised even though it didn't seem very busy.

No follow ups on our food after it was served, my salad was awful - all swimming in oil and only a tiny bit of rocket greens on the bottom of the plate - for £9.45!!!!

When we requested the bill, nearly all staff (including the manager - twice!) turned up at our table to ask us if "we are sure we booked the table under the Taste London card??!!" It was very embarassing and unnecessary!

In the end the bill was slammed on our table and I was so relieved I could finally leave this awful restaurant!

NEVER AGAIN!
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Mrs Macwan
0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I wont elaborate on the litany of bad reviews below. I will simply add that they are correct.

As a baker myself I know that semolina is very useful in stopping breads and pizzas from sticking to surfaces, but my pizza has so much burnt semolina sticking to the bottom of it, it reminded me of sandwiches eaten on a sandy beach as a child.

As for the potato topping...

Avoid.
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R Wade
2 Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 2
Wednesday, January 05, 2011

This review comes definitely under the heading 'extreme dissatisfaction' but given the comments written up thus far I would encourage London-Eating to publish all given how truly terrible this place is, and prevent good, honest, London restaurant fans wasting their hard earned money! Please!

I think I can safely confirm all the commentary offered thus far about this particular 'restaurant', if you could call it that. Pizza? ha! They wouldn't know what one was if it got off the plate walked up to the waiter and smacked him with an anchovy and kicked him in the shin! The base could only be described as 'paving slab' in consistency. The ingredients were straight off the bottom, 'gone off' shelf at Lidl, then frozen, defrosted, frozen again, run over by a passing Covent Garden fruit & veg lorry, then deep fried in God knows what.

Its. A. Pizza. How. Do. You. Mess. That. Up. ?.

My Christmas Pizza; I was almost physically sick, when this lame excuse for a meal arrived, toppings trapped under a molten, oily sea of fried potato cubes, with a great big dollop of muck in the middle of it for to give it some kind of decorative Christmas feel?! - they should have plugged it in, as electrocution would have been a more pleasant prospect. It stayed where the waiter flung it. I moved over 1 seat!

Atmosphere-wise, it was usual Covent Garden Saturday night, loud and buzzy, I love it! but on a trip to the bathroom I noticed one thing every table had in common, lots of un-touched food! - what a waste!

Staff-wise, they were great, pleasant and helpful, but I could detect that they take a regular battering from customers, so I do feel for them, my advise would be to seek alternative employment at another Italian of note, and don't end up bitter and twisted after 6 months of customer pummelling and more importantly, no tips! The management need to be raked over some very very hot coals and held to account, so I would encourage everyone who eats there to write a straight review.

The whole place smelled of deep-fried everything! The cost was daft for what it was.

Obvious they simply don't care, because its Covent Garden, and they only rely on dumb hungry tourists, and not repeat business. This is the only way I figure they can get away with all of the above.

I live in London, and intend to spread the word far and wide on this place!
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James Blackburn
2 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 0
Sunday, December 05, 2010

This was possibly the worst pizza I've ever eaten in my life. And that includes the ones I eat at 5am from a dubious looking street vendor, or when I'm too hungover to bother walking to somewhere decent and find myself in Lidl buying a no brand cheese and tomato. The base was thick, crusty and covered in burnt crumbs from previous attempts at creating something vaguely tasteful.

I should have known from the start this was a mistake. The menu made me a little bit sick in my mouth - the 'innovative' approach to pizza making is obviously trying to mask their massive incapabilities to make something simple taste nice.

After reviewing the menu, I decided the safest option was to go for a margarita. I mean, how could any reputable chain restaurant get that wrong? I'm still asking myself that question as I write this review with my stomach churning. Un. Believable.

I suffered in silence as I was too hungry by this point to kick off, but was waiting for the waiter to give me the 'was everything ok?' line so I could air my grievances. Alas no, he asked me to pass the plate closer to him and walked away. It's almost like he knew the food was awful. This was confirmed as he handed me an extra comment card as my boyfriend was busy filling his out.

I waited a while for the bill. When I said i didn't want to pay the added service charge, he finally gave me a chance to explain why I didn't like the pizza. There was no effort made to take anything off the bill, and the apology seemed insincere at best.

I can't believe I actually paid for this meal. I'm also mad at finding out taste card only publish positive feedback on their website.
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0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Sunday, November 21, 2010

I felt a bit compelled to write a review to stick up for Fire and Stone after eating there last night. Before I went I'd read loads of bad reviews about it so was feeling pretty pessimistic but actually the meal was fine. The quality of the food was nothing special but neither was anything anyone in my group had anywhere near as bad as some reviews have made it out to be (and actually I liked the bases - they were neither dry nor oilier than average). And our waitress was very bubbly and friendly. It was very noisy even on a Tuesday night but it is in Covent Garden after all so it has a good buzz. All in all, I won't be rushing back here as personally I prefer other chain Italian restaurants but it's worth a try if you want to some pizzas that are a bit different to the ubiquitous chains.
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7 Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 7
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

I attended this restaurant on the 16th of October 2010 with my boyfriend and I have to say I was very disapointed. A very loud atmosphere on a Saturday night, you couldnt hear yourself think let alone have a conversation. I didnt think much to the layout with tables which seemed to be set in the walkway. After being showed to our seat we made our order including drinks. When the drinks arrived our waitress spilled some of the drink on my boyfriend. We had ordered Spaghetti bolognese which seemed to arrive pretty quick indicating that food is not cooked to order from fresh when it comes to pasta dishes. The meal was void of seasoning, garlic and onions and just seemed to taste of tomato. There was no parmesan cheese offered or added to the meal. When my boyfriend tried to catch the waitress's attention to bring us both a spoon as only knife and fork were supplied, she basically looked at him and then looked away and this went on for some time before I started to lose my patience and had to basically shout and beckon a waitress to our table. at the end of a very poor quality meal it was then a long waiting game to get the waitress's attention AGAIN just to get the bill. We were not offered the dessert menu and was not asked if we had enjoyed our meal. This was a poor experience for what should have been a lovely birthday Italian meal, shame really.......
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Trish Hussain
1 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 1
Monday, October 18, 2010

I'd say this place is middle of the road at best. I'm not into marking everything down as zero, simply because one aspect of the restaurant disappointed me.

I do agree (in principle) with what the other reviewers have said about this restaurant, but I'm not sure I can go the whole hog and be so venomous about it. It's very rough around the edges, but you still get a pizza and a drink and a reasonably inoffensive bill at the end of it, which is basically what one goes in for. Some of the pizza toppings are a bit weird, but the pizzas themselves seemed "okay". I wouldn't write home about them, though.

Decor might have missed the mark a bit. It seems to look quite nice on the outside, but not so great on the inside.

Service was perhaps a little inattentive, but it's not too hard to wave someone over.

I'd say if you're after an easy choice in the middle of Covent Garden, give it a go. Don't expect the Ritz - this is more like a posh or trendy Pizza Express.
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Alan Ingham - View all reviews by this user
5 Overall rating
Food 5 | Service 5 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 5
Monday, September 13, 2010

The worst "pizza" ever. It's just a pizza - how can they get it so wrong? Some of the toppings are a bit odd but you don't have to choose them; there are "classics" too. No, the problem is that the base is rock hard (and not I don't mean "thin and crispy", I mean hard, dry and crumbly). Luckily I had one with lots of guacamole and sour cream, so could dip it in that to moisten it; otherwise it would've been inedible. Everyone else's in our party was the same. I don't know why we didn't refuse to pay.. I guess life's too short. The service was quite pleasant but the food was too bad ever to go back.
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JRW
2 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Wednesday, August 18, 2010