Romancing the souffle at The Firehouse Restaurant

While the cobblestone streets and boardwalk sidewalks in Old Sacramento are killer to walk on when wearing stilettos, it does have some good restaurants. So far I’ve been to Ten22 and some Italian-style restaurant by the water, but the one place I’ve been dying to try is the Firehouse.

I’ve heard from so many of my girlfriends about the wonderful food and how the place is one of the most romantic restaurants in the city. So naturally, I had to take myself there last Saturday night and I wasn’t disappointed.

First of all they have flights of wine. Now, I love wine, but because I’m a lightweight, I hate having to narrow down my choice to one glass. So when I see wine flights on the menu, I know I'm at restaurant that will soon become dear to my heart. If you don’t know what a wine flight is then you are in for a treat. It’s basically three glasses of three different wines—but instead of being big glasses, they are smaller pours. Basically you get to try three different wines for the price of one.

At the Firehouse, you could choose between three merlots, three pinot noirs, three chardonnays, etc. Because I knew I would be getting the duck (I love duck), I got the Cabernet flight. Yum.

I’m going to skip over my Shrimp bisque as it wasn’t out of this world and move right onto my main course –which was fabulous. The duck came with a dark cherry sauce and a Guinness forth. Whoever thought of adding Guinness to duck is brilliant and deserves to win a prize. The flavors are perfect together and I totally recommend it.

But I wasn't done yet.

After consuming my duck, I went onto dessert. Let me just say, the reason I only got the soup to start instead of something like their Dungeness crab cakes or the herb encrusted brie is because I cheated and took a peak at the dessert menu before I ordered. Yes, I am a girl and sometimes dessert comes first.

And here’s why. They have soufflé!!!

I have a thing for soufflé. Not only is it rare to find in restaurants, but it always comes with some sort of amazing sauce that you get to pour on like decadent syrup. So far my favorite one has been from Chez Phillip in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis where they had this chocolate orange soufflé with a rich anglaise sauce. So good.

At the Firehouse they serve a Grand Marnier soufflé. They bring it to your table hot out of the oven, then they open the top and pour raspberry coulis and a grand marnier/anglaise sauce into it. It takes 20 minutes for them to prepare, but it’s worth the wait…and every calorie.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed my night. I'm not sure if was all the romance in the air, but I definitely had a mini love affair with my food and savored every bite.

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