Chicago Fire — Restaurant in Roseville

💥Wow! I cannot believe we have lived in the area for 2 years and this is the first time we have tried this place. I am not often impressed by a new restaurant but my wife and I were so very pleased with our first experience here. I hardly ever leave reviews but I just had to, in this case. I decided to try it because my brother had just eaten at a Portillo's and I became quite jealous when he sent me pictures of his Italian beef sandwich. I had not yet found a place for an Italian beef since we moved back to California from the Midwest.

When I searched on Google for a spot for Italian beef, Chicago Fire came up. I had seen it before but for whatever reason had not yet tried it. I read the bio of the restaurateur, which spoke of carefully-sourced ingredients and made-from-scratch recipes. I must admit I was a bit skeptical but after our visit, I am completely convinced this is genuine. It seems that finding a place like this is becoming more and more rare, as other restaurants cut corners (probably out of necessity due to high cost of ingredients and supply chain issues, etc.). The quality of the ingredients and care with which the food was prepared truly stood out.

I got the Italian beef, as it comes. I could tell the beef was prepared in-house. It was tender and flavorful, and the jus was perfect. The bread was soft but held up with the jus, and the giardiniera was great. I got my side of fries “Greek style,” and they were delicious. They were tossed with garlic, and it was quite obvious that the garlic was freshly chopped (not from a jar).

My wife got the rigatoni with spicy sausage. The pasta was nice and al dente. The sauce was vibrant and you could tell it was freshly prepared (not from a jar). The sausage was wonderful and savory.

We also shared a thin crust "Abe Froman" pizza, with both fennel and garlic sausage. This was one of the best thin crust pizzas we have ever had! The crust was thin but not floppy. The ratio of crust:sauce:cheese:toppings was perfect. The sausage was far better than that which you would get at a chain pizza restaurant. I love Chicago deep dish but my wife prefers thin crust; we were both so happy with the thin crust, but I am definitely going to try the deep dish next time!

Finally, we shared some of the "cronuts" for dessert. Although we had eaten a lot of carb by then, we thoroughly enjoyed this dessert! Beautiful, pillowy fried croissant dough, half tossed with powdered sugar and half tossed with cinnamon sugar. It came with three different sauces on the side (raspberry, caramel and Ghirardelli chocolate). Although the cronuts were perfect on their own, these sauces were a very fun accompaniment.

In addition to the excellence of the food, the ambience was warm and inviting. I was impressed with how clean everything was, including the restroom. The service was outstanding! Our server, Abigail, was genuinely nice and helpful. She is one of the best servers we have had in recent years.

This is already easily one of my favorite restaurants in the greater Sacramento area, and I know it will become part of our regular rotation. It is hard to believe we have a place like this in the suburbs. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves Chicago style food, or for anyone who is just looking for a great local pizza/wings/Italian place! ...

I would put less than a star if I could... Scott Smith, the manager on duty the night we went a few weeks ago,was the most arrogant, unsophiticated, rude, and insensitive person I've ever encountered. Our waiter, who was extremely kind and hardworking, accidentally put the wrong pizza order in for my table and I. He apologized and offered to make another pizza or have the pizza be taken off the bill. My family decided that we would keep the wrong pizza and be fine with it as long as they took it off our bill. A few minutes later Scott Smith walks over to our table and asks what happened. My mom explains that we got the wrong pizza and that I (me, myself) could not eat the pizza because I was allergic to a few of the toppings on the pizza. I could only eat the deep dish pizza we ordered but it was being shared between 6 of us, so I wasn't able to eat very much. He "jokes" and says "Oh, well she can just eat the deep dish.." I laughed uncomfortably at the rude comment against my allergies. Furthermore, he tells us that he can only take 50% of the pizza off our bill because we had already eaten half of it... My mom and dad start to argue with him saying that 1) it was the wrong order 2)I could not eat the pizza 3) the pizzas already had taken 45 minutues to get to our table 4)We were under the impression that we were getting it fully taken off the bill, so he should stick with our expectations and 5) any repetable restaurant would understand these reasons and in an instant take it off the bill for us, especially since we came to the restaurant to celebrate my sister's birthday... He continued to argue back at us and wouldn't budge, persisting with rude comments. My dad tells him to leave us alone, so he left. However, he came back about 2 minutes later and says "I've changed my mind... I'll take the whole pizza off the bill for you guys..." As he says this, without any consent from us, he grabs the pizza and takes it from our table. My whole family is in shock because we've never had a pizza taken away from us at a restaurant. My friend was even taking a piece of the pizza from the plate as Scott Smith rudely grabbed the pizza from the table. My mom gives another speech, all of us are very angry and uncomfortable at this point. Again, my dad tells him to just leave us alone, once and for all. Everyone was very fed up at this point. My poor sister will definitely not forget this birthday. Even our waiter was shocked at what had happened and apologized to us on his behalf. When we got the bill, not one penny was taken off the bill. He had us pay full price for a pizza we didn't want. As we were leaving, he had the audacity to tell my sister "Happy birthday". What a psychopath...Thankfully, we got his name and were able to complain to the general manager. She was kind and understanding and gave us a 50$ gift card (eligible to any location, thank GOD). If it weren't for the general manager compensating us, I know my family and I would have never gone back to any Chicago Fire location. The food is always great and the atmosphere is nice, but this experience was unacceptable. My family will never go back to the Roseville location. I know we've already fixed the issue and we got our compensation, but I just thought I should warn you all about...

Did a to go order. Place was dead. Employees standing around but nobody wanted to help the to go order for a few minutes. Ordered 2 large deep dish and a kids personal. Total with tip $98. I ask for 4 sides of ranch. Worker says he can only give me 1 small little cup per pizza and it’ll be $1 for an extra 1. Of course your customers can pay $1 for a side of ranch but I’m dropping $98 on pizza and you can’t give me just 1 extra ranch. I said that to the kid and he said employees can only give 1 ranch per pizza. Maybe a new rule because 3 weeks ago when I did a to go order they gave me 2 per pizza. Whoever came up with this 1 per pizza rule, even for large pizzas that are being shared by multiple people, should write a SOP on how to piss off your customers so bad they won’t come back. Either bad policy or bad training. Me and my wallet will never be back. Your staff are trained to step over dollars to save pennies at the expense of good service. Probably $0.25 cents worth of ranch just cost you a customer that dropped $1,000 a year in your store. Let that sink in.

Eric, I can appreciate a response from the CEO but why bring up ranch built into the price not being fair to customers who don’t want ranch. What about customers that order your specialty pizzas with no onion, no tomatoes, etc. The food industry operates on razor thin margins and customers come back for service and your new policy is a disservice. It makes no sense that someone that orders 6 personal pizzas gets 6 sides of ranch and someone who orders 2 large at over $40 a piece gets 2. Sorry Eric, will...