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The location in Back Bay is
The location in Back Bay is still open, isn't it?
According to Boston Restaurant Talk
Yes.
sucks
Well, not the food, but they had a pretty good Haitian dance night on Saturdays.
A true mark of getting old.
Much that I love has been destroyed or send into exile.
A true mark of getting old, AND senile
Is remembering Fire and Ice as something to love.
It blows my mind that a
It blows my mind that a restaurant that is essentially a salad bar of raw meat is allowed to operate. I know several people from different friend circles who have gotten food poisoning from this place.
Did your friends realize
that they were supposed to take that raw meat to be cooked? :-)
Just wondering. Because there's nothing inherently unsafe about what Fire + Ice was doing.
Come on, man. There's
Come on, man. There's nothing unsafe about having people scoop raw meat into a dog food bowl and having them carry it across the room to be cooked? You don't think there's any way somebody would get chicken juice on their hands and not wash them before eating? That's putting way too much trust in the public. It's like Kramer's idea for a cook your own pizza restaurant.
well
Not to victim-blame, but if you don't wash your hands after handling raw meat, you are kind of nasty. Fire + Ice may be a flawed concept for a restaurant, but you gotta wash your hands! (If they got sick because the meat or vegetables themselves were funky, that's a very different problem, and one that is not any patron's fault.)
That's what I'm saying! The
That's what I'm saying! The average person is a moron. Trusting a moron to wash their hands after handling raw meat is a big leap of faith.
People have been handling
People have been handling uncooked meat at home forever, and somehow gotten by.
Totally the same thing
A communal trough of raw meat (cut into bite-sized pieces further expanding the amount of surface area available for contamination) within reach of children and others combined with the worst aspects of a smörgåsbord where cross-contamination is high by using hastily washed bowls/plates with plastic tongs that have been out for hours...
Or your dad cooking a pork tenderloin at home on the grill.
But my real objection to that Fire+Ice was that the dining room frequently had a mess everywhere. The last time I was there (a few years ago now), there just didn't seem to be any love from the staff for the restaurant itself other than wiping the table clean onto the floor/seats and getting another set of bodies into the booth.
"Communal trough of raw meat"
Sure, but...
1) Contamination is apparently pretty common in supermarket meat, especially chicken. So, the average person handling raw meat at home may well be handling contaminated meat. So...
2) At that point it comes down to proper hygiene and proper handling.
In other words, thinking of a small child or a stupid adult with low hygiene awareness who doesn't know to clean hands and surfaces carefully before and after handling raw meat, and they're likely to get sick at home, no?
I'm also wondering if the restaurant had any massive outbreaks of food poisoning. A few people here and there don't necessarily signify; we're talking about 1)the presence of a pathogen in the raw materials, 2)improper storage that lets the pathogen multiply and 3)improper preparation that doesn't kill it off (and then there's mutant e. coli...). That's the kind of thing that will sicken, not one or two from time to time, but everyone who visits the restaurant on a given night. Did such a thing ever happen at this restaurant?
But what?
1) Source for "contamination of supermarket chicken is common"?
2) Proper hygiene and handling of ONE person at home cooking ONE chicken versus proper hygiene and handling of MANY people (including all of the staff) with LOTS of meat (sat out next to each other and getting *intentionally* mixed in serving bowls).
There are SO many more vectors for contamination and more importantly cross-contamination in a situation like Fire+Ice than your own home.
Furthermore, the pathogen doesn't have to be in the raw materials. It can be transmitted by a kid with poop under their fingernails touching the tongs, then you touch the tongs, etc. Buffets alone have a greater risk for getting you sick without even needing the potential for it to be in/on the meat/meat juices in the bowls.
Finally, even if the meat is contaminated, it goes onto the mongolian grill where they don't know how to cook anything medium rare (fortunately for you and them in the risk calculation). So, not everyone is going to get sick because hopefully lots of bacteria are going to die to the heat. But that doesn't mean a few won't make it through and to a few customers. Then you have to figure out if those customers are able to fight off the infection with few if any symptoms or not depending on the virulence of whatever the contamination is.
So, you could easily have a few people get food poisoning from being the lucky suckers that night who had an overworked immune system or just found the one lucky bug that made it past the cooking process or they were the dumb one that licked the sweet and sour sauce off their hands after touching a poop tongs.
It doesn't have to be an outbreak to be real food poisoning and it doesn't mean every time you go there you're going to walk away sick.
Guess we should remove public
Guess we should remove public restrooms from restaurants, lest someone use one, not wash their hands, get sick, and blame the restaurant for it.
I'll have you know, sir, that
I'll have you know, sir, that I was conceived on a salad bar of raw meat, and I am now a moderately successful junior marketing executive for a midsize napkin company. If there had been no salad bars of raw meat, my parents may never have found a suitable place to express their affections physically, and I may never have been born. And then who would be left to leave nonsensical replies to your admittedly sagacious comment?
I prefer my napkins full-size
I prefer my napkins full-size, thank you very much.
And yet...
...the Berkeley Street restaurant has been humming along successfully for a couple of decades, with nary a death or a lawsuit or a shutdown! Must be enough brave, stalwart, risk-taking diners to compensate for all the delicate flowers afraid of -- gasp! -- seeing meat in a restaurant before it's been cooked!
What about shabu places?
What about shabu places? There, you're responsible for cooking it yourself, in a pot of boiling broth.
I'm surprised it's taken so
I'm surprised it's taken so long. That place was terrible.
To be replaced by
Shadows of the Night.
You mean...
Pat Benatar has a theme restaurant?
That must explain why they
That must explain why they sent me an "early birthday present" last month of a free meal ... 2 months before my birthday.
Good Riddance.
I still have no idea how restaurants like this survive as long as they do.
Now that this atrocity is gone, can someone please explain to me how Melting Pot stays in business?
How in the hell have they not been indicted for grand larceny by now? Could the general public be this unbelievably stupid? Why do people continue spending $50 to cook their own shoddily prepared garbage food in a rancid oily cheese mixture? There are no cooks or chefs to pay. The ingredients suck. WHY IS MELTING POT SO GODDAMNED EXPENSIVE?!
Oh! The humanity!
Huh?
They closed about a year ago.
It's a chain
And there's still one in Bedford, luckily.
I know the Melting Pot in
I know the Melting Pot in Boston is closed (because Boston is filled with culinarily smart, forward-thinking individuals), but they're still stealing people's money in other locations around the country.
My sarcasm meter is giving me weird readings.
.
gross
Both places were gross and overpriced. Tourist trap fodder if you ask me.
Hmmm
And who really cares? Good luck in future endeavors to everyone involved.
Well, anyone who planned to
Well, anyone who planned to eat there soon probably cares.
It's better to have a post that says "they closed" than show up and be surprised.
20 years
A long time for a restaurant to survive in that space. I remember a half-decent barbecue place was there before that, some type of brew pub, other places that only stayed open a few years before closing.
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..."
From what I've tasted of
From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire