Blaze on Fire Restaurant & Grill — Restaurant in Hackensack

My family stopped by Blaze on Fire for late lunch on a windy fall afternoon. It was pretty empty inside, but the decor was bright and inviting. The restaurant looked new, clean, and upscale. Music was audible, but it was not loud, which created a pleasant atmosphere. There were a few TVs mounted with soccer games playing.

Menus were on iPads. I prefer printed menus, which just seem easier to explore, and the iPads were also covered in fingerprint smears. The lunch specials were written in chalk on a sign outside the door, but the writing was difficult to read because it was very messy and several words were misspelled. Out server did not know all of the lunch specials items and told us she could only describe menu items in Spanish. I went back outside and took a picture of the lunch specials so my family could see if we were interested.

We started with water and a can of soda, which the server brought over promptly. We took some time looking at the menus, and we wound up waiting for quite a while for our server to come back to take our order. When she arrived, she asked us how everything was, even though we had not ordered and the table was empty aside from our drinks. We pointed this out to her, and she did take our order, though we continued to have some difficulty communicating.

For an appetizer, we ordered the lunch special ceviche. It tasted refreshing and the seafood wasn't rubbery, which is always nice. The portion was fairly small. For my main dish, I ordered the spicy beef lunch special. When my fish came out, I was concerned because the woman who brought it (perhaps the owner?) told me it wasn't really spicy - I think believing that white people must be afraid of spice (something I'm rather familiar with). She also brought out a small container of red salsa and a crema. She was correct; I did not detect any spice in the dish itself, but it was hearty and flavorful. The dish paired perfectly with the crema (with mild heat) and the salsa (for moderate to hot spiciness). The lunch-size portion was still fairly generous, with a large scoop of perfectly cooked rice. Fresh cilantro on top was a nice touch

My father and sister shared beef salchipapas. This was off the regular menu, and the serving size was large. The presentation was very nice, with a freshly cut flower. Apparently, the picture in the menu showed salad in lieu of French fries. Our server did bring out a plate of salad after my sister requested it. The beef was well-seasoned and paired well with the rice. My father and sister disagreed over whether the beef was overcooked, but I thought it was just about perfect. I'm not a huge fan of the French fries in this dish, but it's a traditional pairing and it works okay.

Overall, we all enjoyed the food. It was fresh and tasty. The prices are a bit higher than we expected, but they fit the market they seem to be aiming for with the decor and ambiance. Unfortunately, the service stood out as particularly poor. Our server seemed confused and disorganized, and she did not know the menu. She also had difficulty communicating in English, and she seemed to lack confidence and enthusiasm.

I think this restaurant has very good potential, starting with a strong foundation of hearty and flavorful food. Perhaps during busier times of the day, they have more experience servers. I'd be willing to give them a second try, and for now, at least, the quality of the food would probably make it a better...

Unfortunately, this restaurant talks badly about their servers and their chefs. I do not support restaurants who do not treat their workers equally. If a mistake is made throughout their service there should be no blame of one or the other. Besides that the food that was given to us, the chicken was uncooked very pink, and the mixed ceviche that I ordered had unclean shrimp. A shrimp that is unclean has poop inside, you cannot eat that shrimp because it will cause an upset stomach.. The octopus was not well cooked as well.

(More long detail below)

Along with my husband, we were very excited to come to this new restaurant opened in Hackensack . We were nicely greeted by the server, who then sat us down at a table, which was not thoroughly cleaned. After we sat down and our order was taken for drinks and food. We patiently waited for food, and I started to realize that as time passed other tables were sat after us, and we’re being served their food. I looked at the time and realized that it was an hour after we already put in our order. We know that, unfortunately there was one server that day doing all the hard work of each table. So we had the patience of waiting for a food, but after seeing other tables being fed, that’s when it did bother us so I spoke to an older lady (mother of the owner) to be the one in charge at the moment of the restaurant (at least that’s what she said) that why other tables are being fed after us while we’ve been waiting for a little after an hour? She felt embarrassed by the bad service came up to our table apologized multiple times and then started talking badly about the a chef (one out of the 5) and the server. Blaming the chef for this & that and blaming the server for that which to me and my husband made us feel very uncomfortable. She over shared information that was not professional. We did tell her that you should treat your workers equally that is not one or the others fault and is not the point to the overall issue. The issue is that a mistake is not being accepted and that there’s not well communication between each other as a team to collectively make this restaurant run smoothly. She proceeded to talk about other people outside of the restaurant that are making it so difficult for this restaurant to succeed. Also, what made us feel uncomfortable? Is that the server and the chef because it is an open kitchen we’re arguing back-and-forth in front of everyone else which made the server cry.

I know, and you can tell that the server is very stressed to everything that was happening, and we kept reassuring him that he’s doing a great job that he should not feel as though he is the blame of the service. That to me showed that these people are not being treated equally or respected. So because of that, my husband and I will unfortunately not be going back to...

Blaze on Fire… Where do I begin… Fire is an accurate description bc the place was nothing but chaotic , completely unorganized, and inconsiderate.

The only thing good about this place is that they didn’t automatically add gratuity.

Let’s go over the details:

First, we were told it was a 30 minute wait , and keep in mind it was particularly busy, HOWEVER we did not get seated for a whole hour. Please consider the fact that to be granted a table, you have to be attentive yourself about openings since they will whisper your name in an already loud environment. Which happened to us and they tried to give our table to someone else until we spoke up about it.

Second, while seated, it took an ADDITIONAL 30 minutes to get our food menus which are modern iPads, and one came already dead.

Finally, with all that time waited, we already knew what we wanted to order. But as you can obviously tell what is the common occurrence in this story, we did not receive our food at a timely manner. Another 1.5 hours wait to finally be able to eat.

Food was mediocre, not in my opinion worth the wait. New Jersey already has plentiful delicious Peruvian restaurants, and this spot should not be on the top of the bucket list.

All in all, dine in experience was a 0/10, staff was extremely unempathetic to the situation.

I suggest that staff should have open communication with customers on wait time whether it be for their food, table or etc. At one point we were there literally seated with nothing but ice in our cups. It was difficult to get our waiters attention and it felt as if we were being intentionally ignored as we were vocal about our dissatisfaction.

Restaurant only cares about the money, not about the overall experience of the customer and it...