Fire Hall Kitchen & Tap — Restaurant in Cranbrook

I’ll start off by making it clear that this restaurant has redeeming qualities. The staff are always friendly & the actual building is very cute & unique with a comfortable atmosphere.

Unfortunately though, that’s where the consistency ends. I’ve been to Firehall 6 times (in case the first five experiences weren’t an accurate representation of what their food was like) & won’t be going back anymore.

The items on their menu have so much potential, with each food description containing lots of flavours & colours, as any excellent menu does.

But the food could not be more disappointing. I understand that they wanted to bring Kimberly food vibes to cranbrook, which I appreciate, but they missed the mark.

The food is terribly inconsistent (& varies from being okay-good in one visit, to dry & bland in the next, for the exact same order).

(Example: I had the butter chicken poutine there first time which was actually pretty tasty, so I had it the next time it was there & the fries were stale(?) tasting & there was barely any sauce on the poutine, so the whole meal was very dry & disappointing. I asked the server if it would be possible to have extra sauce added to the poutine because it was dry & she informed me that wasn’t possible, so that was also too bad. For something as simple as fries with butter chicken, you would hope that this would be impossible to get wrong, but...).

It’s also worrisome to branch out to different food items in your visit because there’s a no-low guarantee it will taste as good as the description reads, unfortunately.

(Example: I’ve had 5 different menu items & none of them were memorable/tasty in the least, nor would I get any of them again).

I wish that I could sum up their food by saying that it’s overrated, but sadly, from the many, many people I’ve talked to in town about Firehall food, it sounds like it’s well known here that this is not a spot worth eating for delicious, consistent food.

I would like to reiterate that I appreciate the building, decor, friendly staff & the good bar service. But unfortunately none of these positives out weigh the food negatives.

In summary, this restaurant has so much potential if they could just find a way to revamp their menu & make the food consistent & as delicious (if not more) than what the menu descriptions read. If they were able to do this I would love to support this local business & spread the positive review to all the other (many) Firehall...

My wife and I ate here shortly after it had opened and we remember being very happy with our meal and service. Our latest visit was not so great. We've been watching and trying to get in when it's not so busy. Well, today was the day we decided to give it a try again because it wasn't busy. Maybe 30% capacity and right before dinner rush, it was about 430. We got seated in a timely manner. Our server directed us to our table and left... as we were patiently waiting (about 5 minutes) for menus my wife moved her arm and we noticed the sticker that said to scan for the menu. Not once did the lady seating us mention that we need to scan for our menu. But oh well, we figured it out. We sat there for another 10 minutes and had multiple servers and other employees walk by our table. Nobody even acknowledged us. It was at this point that we started to wonder if you have to order online or something. But we noticed another table get their order taken. So we continued to be patient even though it wasn't busy at all. We stayed patient until a couple was seated next to us about 15 minutes after we had arrived, they were told to scan for their menu and not even 2 minutes later someone was at their table taking their drink order. When the server was done we asked her if we get any service and she said that they didn't see us there. Ummm... you ladies seated us and everyone of you walked right by us during the 15 minutes we sat there patiently. Needless to say we walked out at that point. That's really too bad because we were excited to...

We were really looking forward to trying this out, unfortunately left disappointed. First the good. Amazing renovations done to the old firehall. Staff were exceptional and ambiance was great. Food "taste" was overall good. Now the not so good. I had the Red Baron for $15 plus a $2 upcharge to get a ceasar salad instead of fries. The "fresh baked roll" turned out to be a flat slice of what seemed to be a loaf of bread. It had a very tasty sausage on it covered with so much stuff that it was hard to taste the sausage unless you scraped some off. Quite a small portion too. Almost had to go to Arby's ;-) for a bite after. The ceasar salad was very good, but should be a NC upgrade. My wife and daughter both had the Dirtbag burger ($16). Again for the price, not much there. Tasty but small. Again an upcharge for my daughters salad and my wife, who's gluten free, paid a small upcharge for the GF bun (normal, no complaints about that) which was great and they offered her a GF gravy substitute if she upgraded (for $5) to poutine. This turned the burger meal into $25 between the 2 upcharges. The GF/Vegan gravy was not good. Not hot enough to melt the cheese at all and tasted like butternut squash (or pumpkin or something like that) with spices. Tasted OK once you added ketchup. Also, get away from the processed cheese (at least I hope it was processed or it was really bad real cheese). In a place like this, real cheddar is expected.

Quality of ingredients are very good, execution not so good. Debating a...