Fire Station 1

Attended a group event there and was rather disappointed. The event started at 4, they claimed it was scheduled for 6. The service was marginal at best, they ran out of beer glasses and had to serve people in small plastic cups. What kind of bar runs out of beer glasses on a Tuesday evening? Needless to say, this was my first and last time at this place

Worst experience ever. Waited 15 minutes to be acknowledged by the bartender (the bar was not crowded). I ordered wings to go, 35 minutes later the wings arrived on a plate. I asked for a box to go. She rolled her eyes came back five minutes later stating that the wings were not mine and that mine were just being cooked. I asked for my money back which took another 10 minutes. Unfortunately I was not the exception to this awful service. While waiting for my food I met another customer who said he waited at his table for 45 minutes before the waitress came to his table to take his order. He ordered the steak which he said was horrible. Thinking it would be faster going to the bar to order a beer he left his table. It took the bartender 20 minutes to acknowledge him. Needless to say I will NEVER return there are too many other restaurants in that area to deal with such poor customer service.

This was my first time here this place was pretty good I enjoyed the service. Quirra was a great hostess & kaira did great at serving my table

This negative review is based solely on the management, led by Amy Horowitz, not the working staff.
I made a reservation ($ 100), to make use of the lounge area upstairs for a meetup event, on a Sunday evening.
Despite the fact this reservation was made 2 weeks prior, and then contacted her 3 days before the date of the event, on getting there at the appointed time, the staff downstairs was not made aware of the event, no arrangements was made to accommodate guests for over 40 mins after I got there.
When I got to speak to Amy in person, her attitude was rude, and she yelled at I and a friend, that I was supposed to know there was a football game tonight (she made no mention of it at any point), and the sound system will not be turned down for music.
Long story short, I had to cancel my event, and demand a refund of my deposit, and with no apologies offered from Amy Horowitz. The staff are great here, but this has to be the most unprofessional and disgusting behavior from the manager of an establishment. Do not be fooled by her patronage over the phone.

This is a really neat place!
The seafood linguini is the best I’ve had!!!
So much lobster! It’s a must here!!!
The crab balls are an awesome appetizer!
Overall, it’s a definite go!

This place has so much potential but the service is terrible and I doubt I will go back. For starters, I ordered a red wine and it came freezing cold. Since when is red wine served freezing cold? A bartender should know better than that. Second, I’ve never seen a set of such unorganized, confused, and lazy bartenders. Neither one seemed to have a clue about what they were doing or what was going on. To add insult to injury, I asked for a tea for my sore throat and the male bartender tried to persuade me from getting it because he said it would take a long time. I said I wanted it anyways so he huffed and puffed his way to get it and it took all of five minutes. THEN when my cousin tried to order a hot toddy for me he had the nerve to sigh so loud that I said forget it.
I ordered the soup of the day — which neither bartender knew what it was and had to find out. It was chicken noodle, but had NO noodles. Literally was just chicken and broth. Such a disappointment since this is close to my house.

This review is a long time coming. Fire Station 1 is the first sports bar I visited when I moved to DC, and it’s still, for me, one of the best sports bar experiences in the area.
Fire Station 1 offers everything you need from a sports bar. Plenty of TVs, an adequate (but not great) beer selection, and really good wings. And because it’s in Silver Spring, parking is plentiful and the place never gets too packed.
I’ve tried a lot of items from their menu and have yet to be disappointed. The aforementioned wings are great and the crab cakes were surprisingly good.
Truth be told, there are sports bars in the area with better food and drinks. But besides having to pay DC prices, parking and finding seats at those places during a big game is near impossible.
All things considered (price, convenience, atmosphere) it doesn’t get much better than FS1.

No longer is a brewery, they no longer have the beer made for them. Should they take
brewery off their building, or why did they have it on the building, they never made any beer on site.
They always seem to have a good beer selection aside from their house beer, i’m not going to miss any of their beers.

I went today for lunch with my husband. We got seated as soon as we walked in. And the food was great! The reason why I didn’t give five stars is because part of our order never came up and we couldn’t ask for it because the waiter never came to check on us since we got our food. Once he came to see if we wanted the check I told him what happened he then apologized and have us 5 dollars off. But besides that everything was good.

My four star rating from three years ago still holds, as do most of the comments I made then. Yesterday I celebrated my birthday here, and so even though the food is pricier than I’d like, and I don’t normally have full meals here for that reason, I did. One of the few items that I would NOT consider overpriced was what I had last night, the seafood risotto. It isn’t often you can get an entrée that has lobster in it these days for $ 16.99. But to be honest, there wasn’t a lot of lobster — it’s mostly shrimp in the risotto. But even that much shrimp in an entrée is usually going to cost you more than the $ 16.99 price that Fire Station 1 charges. It was perhaps a bit saltier than I might have preferred, but not bad at all. If you’re eating here and you like shrimp, this dish is my recommendation.
The Angry Orchard hard cider here is the main reason I come to this place. Comparing Gordon Biersch to this restaurant, I have to say that GB has better food, but I like the cider better than beer. But they do now have Guinness — neither my wife nor I had it last night; I had the hard cider and she had a cocktail with the hard cider and whisky — but that’s another reason to come here.
Portions here are generally quite ample. My wife was not filled by the quesadillas she ordered, but honestly, it was billed as an appetizer and it looked to me that _​for_​an_​appetizer_​it was a large portion, just not really an entrée. My seafood risotto came with a large side salad, and I cannot complain about the portion size. And we shared a dessert, but each half of the banana split was a reasonable size dessert by itself.
If you come between 4 and 6 pm, many appetizers and drinks are reduced in price, reducing the priciness somewhat. But it is still true that even with those «Happy Hour» discounts, with tax and tip, the total cost of our dinners came to $ 50, so it’s not a place we’ll be going to for dinner a lot.

The rack of ribs were dry with chunks of spices on top that tasted gritty. It came with veggies from the freezer.
The wings weren’t bad, but should be 50 cent wings.
Onion rings were unremarkable. For that price, I expected a tower.
I like that they have Seafood Linguini on the menu, but I didn’t want to be the first person to order that from here. I’ll bet it’s not fresh either.

We ate here last night. My wife had the haddock sandwich and I had the cheesesteak. In both cases our food was dry and over cooked. The cheesesteak was crunchy rather than melty, which is odd for that sandwich. My wife’s dish was extremely dry and the haddock tasted old. The homemade chips were pretty good, but they were over seasoned and under salted. So one decent thing about the meal was the staff, who were overworked but still very pleasant.
The manager overheard our complaints, but only offered vague promises to give us a deal when we returned, but that isn’t likely.
The prices were very reasonable for the area. If only they had some quality control in the kitchen.

When I didn’t have cable at my apartment I used to walk here for Monday night football games. This place is your average to below average sports bar.
I’ve never ordered any food from here that was very good. The prices aren’t particularly great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pretty girl at the bar. The highlights are the beer and TV., If you want anything more then go somewhere else.

I came here on a Saturday night with some friends to enjoy the African party that they have upstairs. We originally had plans to meet up somewhere else but that plan failed which led us to be at Station 1 quite early. We sat down at a booth and the hostess handed us menus and then promptly served us water. We weren’t really hungry so we decided that we didn’t want to order & would just wait until the party started.
Another lady came to take our orders and wasn’t too pleased that we had decided not to order while still sitting down in «her» booth as she put it. She then told us that we would have to leave Station 1 and then pay to come back inside. I was willing to cooperate up until that point. I have to order something to sit down in your establishment? Fine. However, telling us to leave and come back was just ridiculous being as we were already inside. We just got up from «her booth» and went to the bar to have drinks. Her passive aggressive attitude definitely tainted the earlier portion of the evening.
I ordered a Blue Moon for $ 6 (I think) at the bar — the bartender’s sweet demeanor definitely made up for the waitress’ attitude. When that was done, I ordered an $ 11 Long Island which she made with just a splashhhh of coke… just how I like it. I ordered another Long Island a little later after the party had started upstairs and the price went up to $ 14. WTH? Not to mention that this drink definitely had more brown in it then the one downstairs –_​_​_​– According to the bartender upstairs, «all drink prices go up after 11.» Paying more money for less alcohol? Umm… dead! I tried to talk to the bartender about it but he simply referred me to his bar manager. This blew me more then the situation with the waitress.
I didn’t try to the food or anything so I can’t say whether it’s delicious or not, but the menu items seemed appetizing. If you can, have a seat at the bar with the sweet bartender and you’ll receive better service. Just be prepared to spend some dinero because they seem to be a bit money hungry here…
Side Note: the DJ for the African party upstairs was definitely on point. It wasn’t a full house but it was still fun (two Long Islands made sure of that). I danced so much, my legs were still hurting two days after.

The reason why this place is getting two stars is because of one crappy waitress. Every time we eat there I REFUSE to have her as our waitress. Every time it’s a horrible experience. I’m not sure what her name is but she is an older Caucasian lady with brown/​reddish hair, usually serves everyone outside. I’ve seen this woman sit down while tables wait for their check, text on the job, answer her cellphone on the job. Not to mention she is rude and never really cares to pay close attention to our order. Almost every time we order from her something gets sent back.
One time she refused to serve us because the host sent us outside to pick her own table and we weren’t «assigned one» So we ended up having the bartender with the beard serve us. It was far better service then she’s ever provided. The bartender who was also tending to people inside was coming in and out to check on us. He was very attentive and polite. That’s the kind of service that keeps customers coming back!

So, I spent a lot of time here.
I’m going to explain this fully. First I have to start by I looked at Unilocal Big time before I got started. From that I needed to ask some questions. So I asked Steve the bartender, if I only was going to judge this place by one meal, what should I order? Steve went on to say the chicken sandwich can’t recall the exact name of that chicken sandwich but he said it was grilled and then fried and he said anything that comes off the grill is good.
So I continued to read my Unilocal reviews and no one said anything about that chicken sandwich so that wasn’t what I was going with.
I usually give every place a chance on the crab cake but so many people killed it. Then I decided I wasn’t even going to take a chance spending 16 dollars for a crab cake that had already been determined not to be good. Somebody got on the mahi mahi wrap so I passed on that. Basically Unilocal help with killing everything. So I decided to take a walk down the street. After about an hour I made it back to the party and decided that I would sit with some friends and grab something that no one can get wrong. Old bay wings. No way you can mess old bay wings up right… Well I’m not even sure that they’re using olé bay. And if they are it’s a really salty version of it which was a little disturbing even though the chicken was cooked very well it had great seasoning. I’m just not sure it was olé bay. Blue cheese dressing is sorta Ranchi flavored but it was good. And the chicken quesadilla was actually really good. Guacamole was decent salsa was average lettuce was fresh. So I have absolutely no complaints on the chicken quesadilla. Another table mate got the potato wedges with the steak wrap. Her first bite she looked at me and said, this is dry. Rub some ketchup on it rubbed some of that blue cheese ranch dressing on it. And then completed it so with a little sauce it became much better. But the wedge fries were actually pretty good. Or not bad let me say.
The ambiance is great the place looks wonderful but the food I’m going to just give it an average rating at best. If you just come here for a drink you will not be disappointed there was not one drink that I saw served, I take that back I did see someone get two Coronas that they turned back he felt that they were stale, but that might have just been his taste buds on that night. so my drinks were good the Long Island was good my table mates had and the Malibu thing he was good. But that’s all what other people had actually it’s a really nice place to meet someone up there this is my dance floor was nice and large plenty of good sound, plenty of good bartenders working very hard attentive and quick. And the outside patio was very nice. And plenty of folks out there smoking cigars. All in all it wasn’t a bad outing. Or bad experience.
All food was decent.

three of us came here for brunch on sunday morning. we arrived at about 11:15, so right after they opened. we were seated immediately and the restaurant still had kind of a sleepy feel to it.
our waiter was polite and courteous, but incredibly overdressed in his pressed white shirt and bow tie. i have no idea why this is the uniform, as it is 100% incongruous to the offerings of the restaurant itself, which are casual bar options. anywho.
he took our drink order. first they were out of grapefruit juice. then the iced tea was brewed incorrectly so we had to wait for that. okay. we finally ordered, and i got the breakfast pizza, but substituted sunny side eggs for the scrambled. both guys order the burger with the sunny side egg, cooked medium, one with the fries, the other with breakfast potatoes. i also ordered their spicy bloody mary, and my boyfriend got a mimosa.
the good:
spicy bloody mary totally delivered on the spice factor. they use absolut peppar to help achieve that spice level, along with pepper and horseradish. i appreciated the generous garnish of lemon and lime wedges, along with 2 big green olives.
mimosa was on the light side in terms of alcohol, but the OJ component was really yummy. unsure if it was freshly squeezed, but the flavor was better than average.
my pizza was delicious. it had ham and sausage, as well as peppers along with 3 sunny side eggs. it was cooked perfectly with a crispy and chewy crust, and the yolks, when poked, were beautifully runny.
the bad:
waiting for everything (and i do mean everything). we were seated at 11:15. we left at 1:15. we ordered drinks and entrees, with very little modification. i have no idea what happened, but i suspect our order was cooked incorrectly the first time, and had to be re-​cooked. our server was apologetic and proactive about our wait, but it was still an unnecessary wait, nonetheless.
the burgers were cooked to well. especially considering we were waiting for our food, and the requested temperature was medium, this is really unacceptable.
breakfast potatoes looked anemic and obviously lacked flavor/​seasoning. my boyfriend’s fries weren’t really hot or crispy. they were just eh.
we’re not local, so we probably won’t be back when we do return. there are a wealth of other restaurants in the area, and we would try one of them before returning here.

When i went they had an ordeal with a customer walking out on a large check. I wont hold that against them because i know how exciting things like that can be.
Service was still ehhh for the amount of business they had, but they were all polite.
The food I had was enjoyable. 3 alarm hot wings and fried crab balls.
The deserts were much to be desired for their price and they seemed like a lot of wipe cream decoration for filler.
I also had the beer sampler, i was kinda hoping there would be some in house or more local beers but it was all national and that kinda seems to defeat the purpose of a sample platter.
I like how the restaurant is styled and that the building was repurposed. I do think they could use some tv’s on the booth walls because not everyone is facing the bar (the side with the tv’s)
All in all the inconveniences did not turn me away and I plan on try this place again.

This is my third and final update of this restaurant. I will not go here again I have given this place several chances and I am just tired of it.
Group of five of us. Nothing particularly challenging in the order. I ordered the French Onion soup. It was at best room temperature. Someone else ordered a turkey club, she was given the turkey burger instead. She didn’t want to waste food, so she ate it anyway, but it wasn’t what she had ordered. The sliders that someone else at our table order arrived cold and slightly dry and without any cheese (apparently the waitress didn’t ask if she wanted any — and our friend did want it). She sent it back to the kitchen, they added cheese, ran it under the broiler and it was just enough to melt the cheese, but didn’t actually heat the burger.
The waitress was responsive and apologetic, but the food is inconsistent. Also, I was hoping to try the Herogies that have been on the news, and have signs in the lobby… but they weren’t on the menu. They weren’t even on the table card.
I am incredibly disappointed because this place had such promise.

This is my second time there and it’s been okay!
Food comes out fast and decent but I feel like they don’t put much effort to make the plate look decent. They’ll just throw everything into a plate and call it a day. I got the chicken quesadilla but the guacamole came really dark brown. It didn’t look fresh. I asked for frozen margarita which was on the menu but the waiter said they don’t have the machine to make the frozen one and it’s not that good. Why keep it on the menu if there is no machine to make it? We asked for extra lemon between 5 people and he only brought 3 pieces. I just don’t understand why they are so stingy on their condiments.
Anyways, I don’t know if I’ll go back unless I have to.