Firehall Bistro, Oliver, British Columbia

The Firehall Bistro restaurant is located in a small town of Oliver in the Okanagan Valley known for it’s many wineries and award winning wines. Oliver is also known as the Wine Capital of Canada.

Driving through Oliver you can’t miss the Firehall Bistro. Is is located right on main street. The building used to be old firehouse hense the name. After extensive restorations and additions the old firehouse is a home to one of Oliver’s finer restaurants.

There used to be a little wine shop as a part of the restaurant and I though it was a great idea to offer local wines to tourists and locals as well.

In the summer patrons of the restaurant can enjoy the Okanagan sunshine on a large patio. It is located directly facing the main street and sidewalk so if you are into people watching you will enjoy it.

The Firehall Bistro offers nice selection of sandwiches, burgers and salads for the lunch crowd.

At dinner time they cater to more sophisticated palette with selection of seafood, pasta, steaks and other classier dishes.

I invited my girlfriend and her toddler to join me for lunch and try it out.

I ordered their Monte Cristo sandwich with Caesar salad. The sandwich was very tasty and perfectly done. Caesar salad was fresh and crispy with the perfect amount of dressing. However, I do not think that the dressing was made on premises.

My girlfriend ordered Steak Sandwich with Caesar salad. According to her it was OK. The steak was not from the best cut of meat and being overdone didn’t help that.

Most of the sandwiches were under $10.00 and the portions were satisfactory.

For little one we ordered Grilled Cheese sandwich on brown bread with French Fries from the Children’s Menu. The kids meal didn’t include drink and/or dessert and was $6.95. I found that quite expensive especially after I noticed that Grilled Cheese on regular menu is only $6.00. It didn’t make sense.

I think the best part of our meals was the little side pasta salad that came as a bonus with every meal. It was delicious. All 3 of us enjoyed it.

To sum it up I would give The Firehall Bistro 7 points out of 10 for their lunch. I would go back.

I also visited The Firehall Bistro for quiet dinner for two with my husband few weeks later.

As I mentioned The Firehall Bistro is considered Oliver’s finer restaurant.

We arrived for our dinner date. The restaurant looked very nice and romantic. The fire was burning making it nice and cozy. Pleasant music was playing.

The place was quite empty.

I was little disappointed right from the start when the waitress seated us at the tiny little table for two in almost empty restaurant. My husband is a large 6′4″ man and looking at him and the table was quite grotesque.

We started with glass of house wine. The Firehall Bistro has a large wine selection featuring many local award winning wines. If you want to try Okanagan wines this place has a great selection.

It was time to order dinner.

As an appetizer I chose Honey Garlic Chicken Wings. The order consisted of 5 flat wings and 5 drumstick like wings. The flat wings were very tasty and full of flavor. The drumstick wings were thick, tough and not edible.

For main meal I ordered one of my favorite dishes Chicken Marsala served with stuffed baked potato and garden salad.

My husband chose Firehall burger (friend told him he must try it) with Poutine.

The garden salad came in a tall and narrow dish that was meant for serving seafood. The salad was fresh, but it was out of a package. It was washed, but not dried properly and by the time I came to the bottom of my dish rest of my salad was drowning in a pool of water. The salad was served in single portion container straight from Kraft.

Chicken Marsala was a big disappointment. The sauce was very thick and dark brown like gravy. Beside mushrooms it also had pickled pearled onions that gave the sauce very odd sour flavor.

The best part of my meal was the Stuffed Baked Potato. It was done perfectly and it was full of flavor.

The Firehall burger was delicious according to my husband. The meat was tender and done to perfection.

The Poutine however was another disappointment. The fries were covered in thick dark brown gravy. Same gravy my Marsala sauce was made from. There was no cheese curd used for poutine. Just shredded cheese.

To finish our quiet dinner for two we ordered desserts.

There was not much on the dessert menu that interested me.

I settled for Chocolate cake and my husband went with Apple pie.

The dessert portions were tiny in comparison to other restaurants. They came on equally tiny plates to appear bigger, but that didn’t help.

Chocolate cake was very rich and brownie like texture with chocolate fudge like filling. Not my taste. I ended up taking it home to make son who quite enjoyed it.

Apple pie was very tasty, but it also was the smallest piece of pie my husband ever had.

The Firehall desserts are made in Oliver by a local person. I think it’s nice that they are using local ingredients and some of their items are homemade right in town.

To sum up our dinner experience in Oliver’s fine restaurant I give the Firehall Bistro 3 out of 10 for their dinner meals.

I think the cook that was peeking through the kitchen door every 5 minutes during our meal needs to be concerned more about cooking and making his dishes taste better then check in out who’s in the restaurant.