Firetender — Restaurant in Manteo

We grabbed lunch here in mid October when we were in the OBX for our anniversary. I didn't get around to leaving a review until now because I don't like to leave unfavorable reviews and don't want to negatively impact a business, but it would be dishonest of me to rave about the experience we had here.

After checking out the NC aquarium (awesome btw!) we were starving and settled on this place for lunch. It was a good chance to impress us with most food because we had both gotten to the level of hunger where even a mediocre meal would have probably tasted amazing. It wasn't busy but they were fairly understaffed. Between the bar, seating people, clearing tables, and waiting tables, there were 2 FOH employees working. We were seated and then it took about 25 minutes to be asked about drinks and/or food by a server, which was annoying, but whatever. My boyfriend and I have worked customer service positions and know what it's like to be understaffed, so we tend to be forgiving in that regard and try our best not to make the lives of customer service employees hell. I'm not a confrontational person and if I go to a restaurant and there's an issue with my food or the service, I'll usually eat it or throw it away, tip the server, and then leave without saying anything (that's exactly what we did here).

Our waitress was nice and provided pretty good service despite the absolute chaos she was dealing with (she was the only one waiting on tables and clearing them when she got to us, as evidenced by the 2-3 messy tables nearby that sat around needing to be cleared)

My boyfriend ordered a burger and fries and I ordered a margarita brick oven personal pan pizza, which is supposed to be this place's specialty. I don't know if you're familiar with what a pizza Lunchable tastes like, but that's a good description for what my meal was like, only that's insulting to Lunchables because my food was way worse than that. My food was really cold, like to the extent that the only way we could tell that it had been cooked at all was the slightly melted cheese. The crust was the consistency of a raw uncooked soft tortilla, and it was so thin / slippery / floppy / cold that it was super hard to pick up a piece of the pizza and actually eat it without it falling apart. The sauce 100% tasted like + had the consistency of very watered down ketchup, and it was dripping off the slices as I tried to eat it. I'm pretty easy to please and I'll tolerate almost anything when I'm starving, but this was so disgusting that it was hard to get myself to eat any of it. It was cold, unseasoned, and had minimal cheese, basil, or sauce or tomatoes. What toppings were on there fell off as soon as you picked up the slice and tried to eat it (and not in a greasy "New York Style" kind of way), and the consistency of it with the crust was gross because the entire thing tasted raw.

I choked down about half of my pizza because I don't like wasting food or money, but I needed multiple refills on my water to do this because of how gross and raw I felt like it tasted. My boyfriend's burger and fries were warm & quite a bit more edible than my pizza, he tried a piece of mine & said it was borderline inedible.

I just can't believe that this is the pizza produced by a place that considers brick oven pizza to be the star of their brand, as it was 100% the worst pizza I have ever had. Paying $55~ for our meal after tip was crazy, crazy enough to make me decide to write this review. After this meal my boyfriend was significantly less hungry but I was grossed out, slightly sick to my stomach, out $55, and still hungry lol. I feel bad for the employees that were in the FOH here. It was my choice not to make their day difficult by not complaining about this when I was there, but I am writing this review to ask the owner of this establishment to please consider increasing the number of people they choose to have scheduled at a time and to also please reconsider if the quality of the food central to their branding (pizza) is worthy of the prices...

My wife placed a take-out order for an "Italiano Pizza", "Mushroom Pizza" and the "Real-Deal Caesar" with a crab cake on top for takeout. Food was ready quickly before the promised time. Take out area was confusing since it was just a couple of tables in the corner.

The food appearance was disappointing when we opened the boxes. The pizzas were flat and covered in corn meal and oil. There was so much oil that it had saturated the bottom of the boxes. It literally went through/around the wax paper below the pizzas and to the boxes. The pizzas were cold and not cooked fully in the center. They clearly put a lot of oil on prior to cooking and that resulted in a burnt oil taste from the crust. The corn meal was not only on the bottom but also on the crust and I assume under the toppings and sauce. The cornmeal from prior pizzas littered the bottom of the pizza as little balls of burnt cornmeal.

The pepperoni was the cupping type which was fine but the soppressata needs to go through a slicer. It was clearly hand cut and very thick/thin on each ends. The quick cook on the pizza did not help render any of the soppressata and left it quite hard.

The "Real-Deal Caesar" was definitely not, the real deal. The lettuce had large chunks of the core and the chop had lots of different sized pieces. It looked like a Walmart caesar salad kit with a crab cake on top. The crab cake was fine but is clearly just a deep fryer crab cake. Lots of their favorite corn meal surrounding the crab cake.

This was marketed as a higher end pizza place/restaurant and it did not live up to the hype. We were definitely disappointed by the quality of food and the cook...

My friends and I were excited to try this new restaurant in Manteo and it did not disappoint. We started with a few appetizers of oysters on the half shell, roasted Brussel sprouts and tuna nachos. The sprouts were amazing with lots of flavor and crispy bits just we all like. The Tuna nachos are a definite must and the oysters were nicely dressed and salty. We ordered a few pizzas, mushrooms, and scampi. The crust was perfectly crisp, charred, and soft. The mushroom pizza came with fresh whole morel mushrooms and the scampi pizza included not only fresh shrimp but clams in the shells. We also ordered the shrimp and scallops with grit cakes, and it was some of the best I have had. Lastly, we tried the seared tuna over curried noodles, which was a pure delight. To end the meal, we ordered three desserts, and they were gone so fast we didn’t even take pictures! Our vote was for the table banana split complete with fresh baked brownie, chocolate, vanilla ice cream and...