Chicago Fire — Restaurant in Sacramento

I very recently planned a 50th birthday party for my wife at the J Street Chicago Fire on October 22. I met with the assistant manager/banquet coordinator, Leilani, and planned a party for 30 people with the Rush Street banquet package. I was told the party would have 2 servers and we would have unlimited thin crust pizza and salad for the duration of the party. On the night of the party, I was given only 1 server with no explanation from Leilani and she did not help our sole server who ran around for 4 hours doing his best to tend to the guests. Leilani did manage to appear front and center to count the number of guests for the final bill and that is the only time I saw her after our initial arrival. The food was not replenished and our guests waited over 30 minutes for salad and after the first round of pizzas, additional pizza was never brought out. Also, our guests waited and waited for their drinks much to their frustration. Upon reflection, I wish I had been more assertive with Leilani on that evening, but I was also quite busy visiting with our guests. I counted on the restaurant and the large sum of money we paid to take care of things for us. That's why we hired them in the first place. When I went back to speak with Leilani the next day to question why we only had 1 server, she said, "Well, someone called in sick." There was no effort to rectify the problem or apologize. I then told her that I thought she should compensate us and she agreed to take $100 off of my $617.37 overall bill. She took my credit card to apply the compensatory refund, which took roughly 15 minutes for some reason, but instead of applying credit to my card, she charged me an ADDITIONAL $100. After additional phone calls and conversations, I finally received a refund of the initial compensatory $100 and a refund for her additional $100 charge. I love the pizza at Chicago Fire, but will never again consider having any sort of party at the restaurant for the mere fact that Leilani, the assistant manager and banquet coordinator, showed very little interest in making sure my wife's 50th birthday party received excellent service. On the contrary, it seemed that Leilani's only interest was collecting the money due the restaurant with minimal thought to service. In this day and age, with so many businesses eager to serve the public, I would recommend going somewhere else, rather than Chicago Fire for large parties...

Update March 18 2025: I must say I have not visited Chicago fire as much in 2025 as I have in previous years, but for me the only food that keeps me coming here are the chicken wings. The garlic buffalo is very good and the buffalo, but their pizza leaves a lot to be desired for the price you are paying.

Over the years, the thin crust pizza has been my go to, but I usually get during happy hour and those are good, but unless you ask for the thin crust pizza well done, it separates too easily and all the toppings fall apart. The deep dish pizza in my opinion just isn't very good and has hardly ever been good. Tonight, I ordered a small deep dish pizza and the pizza was watery and not even the dough seemed like it was fully cooked because of the wateriness, but this has always been an issue. Then I find out they are now charging $1 per ranch which is a big upcharge and must have been recently implemented this year. Again, I understand the rising costs of food and all, but to give customers one ranch per pizza, no matter the size, seems ridiculous since a lot of people eat their pizza with ranch. Sadly, I'll only have to visit every once in a while now as the quality of the food with the price of the food doesn't match and make it worth it unless you're getting the wings on 50% off wing Mondays. I don't know if they'll charge extra for sauces for the wings, but if they did, I probably wouldn't even go anymore out of principal.

7 Years ago: Always a great place to go for happy hour. House margarita is good, thin traditional is amazing and you must have greek fries. It...

Friday 1/20/2023 - Had lunch at Chicago Pizza today. Address is 2416 J St, Sacramento, CA 95814 (Midtown). They are in a brick building with parking on the side. There's also street parking. Luckily, we got front street parking when we arrived for lunch. It's all paid parking. Upon arrival:

Pros:

1. staffs were very nice. Our tables were all set up and ready to go.
2. plates, cups, utensils, tables, chairs were all clean.
3. they do NOT charge for hot water here. Yes!!!
4. we got the chicken pizza, all meat pizza and vegetarian deep dish pizzas. All the pizzas were great! I like mine with extra duce, so it was prefect for me. For others, they said it was too saucey or too tomatoe-y. I tried each pizzas.
5. we got 3 different kinds of salads. All tasted great. Perfect amount of salad dressing on each. I tried each salad.
6. server checked on our table several times.
7. restaurant was nice and quiet when we came for lunch. So it was great! We were able to hear one another talk and play games.
8. I saw they have a bar.
9. I saw they have a little wine cellar above.
10. there was a little cupcake shop inside. Two separate businesses, but sane owner, we were told.

Cons:

1. no cons!

Conclusion: I liked this restaurant. Foods were good. Restaurant clean. Service great! Servers nice. They didn't rush us (like other restaurants I've been too). We had lots of food to pack to go. I'd come here again. If you haven't been...