Firebirds Wood Fired Grill (Pembroke Pines)
304 SW 145th StreetI’d be a fool to turn down a trip to Florida in January….so I didn’t.
Work offered me a pretty cool opportunity to work in Miami during Super Bowl week. It meant long hours, short nights, and eight days away from my family, but J was on board because it was such a unique opportunity for me and a chance for a lot of overtime.
A co-worker and I flew in to Miami International Airport pretty early on Sunday morning. We got our stuff, picked up the rental car, then headed to our hotel in Pembroke Pines about a half hour outside of Miami.
The hotel was having issues with their computers so we couldn’t check-in. They got a maintenance person to let us into our room to drop our stuff so we could go do what we needed to do that day.
We were going to have to make a trip down to Miami Beach to pick some things up for the week ahead but first, lunch.
My co-worker just wanted to go to the Cracker Barrel next to our hotel but there was over an hour wait. I was actually pretty glad about that. I wanted to find something we don’t have in West Michigan.
He put it on me to find a new place. As you will see over the next few blog posts, we were in a suburb of Miami that was very in to chain restaurants. I did my best to find local or regional chains and stayed away from places we could eat at back here in Southwest Michigan.
I settled on a place called Firebirds Wood Fired Grill. The restaurant is a chain of casual dining restaurants in twenty states. The closest locations to Michigan would be in either Indiana or Ohio.
This particular Firebirds is on the corner of 145th Street and Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines. There are a lot of of chain restaurants in the cluster of buildings surrounding The Shops at Pembroke Gardens open air mall.
We got to the restaurant probably around 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon. The hostess greeted us at the door then took us to a table in the back dining room. The restaurant has kind of a modern chic look using wood floors and a dark color palette against grey brick walls to set the mood.
We both skipped beers and asked for Coke’s to drink. He had been an early and long travel morning to get to this point and I was just craving the sugar sweetness of a pop.
I picked Firebirds because they had an upscale pub menu. I knew we weren’t going to have a lot of time to sit down and eat meals the rest of the week so I wanted to get off on a good foot.
My colleague went with a salad but I went straight to the burger section.
I picked the Smokehouse Burger from the Handhelds section of the menu. The sandwich is a brioche bun with a thick, juicy burger patty topped with Java BBQ sauce, applewood smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, and red onion. This sandwich was everything I wanted in that moment. The meat had a nice char-grilled outside but it was soft and juicy in the middle. The bacon added a salty crunch while the BBQ sauce threw in a little sweetness. The sandwich came with seasoned steak fries which were alright but nothing super fancy.
My co-worker grabbed the bill for this lunch so I don’t have a good idea on the cost.
It’s not hard to notice that Firebirds Wood Fired Grill is a chain. The food is really good but you also get the feeling you know you’re going to get this exact same burger at anyone of their other locations.
We were looking for a spot to get a nice, delicious, hearty meal in before our hectic week. We got that at Firebirds.
SW Michigan Dining 