WHEN HUSBAND-AND-WIFE team Craig Kolbitz and Ellen Brown lost the lease on Belltown Pub in September, they declared they’d focus their energy on the pub’s younger sibling, Firefly. This was welcome news because Firefly had been, in the two years since it opened on Queen Anne, all concept and very little follow-through. Pretty yet ineffectualas opposed to radiating the luminosity of its namesake insectthe restaurant might more aptly have been called Ladybug.
The owners, themselves Queen Anne residents whose children attend Queen Anne schools, had meant well with FireflyKolbitz designing and building the space as he had with Belltown Pub, down to the hand-crafted mahogany tables; his old art-school buddy, Northern California artist John Hoft, providing the series of paintings that line the dining room wall. The result was Seattle chic. Or, more specifically, Queen Anne chic: darkish, colorful, yuppie-friendly. The kind of place one might wear that new L.L. Bean sweater and look just right.
Opening chef Dennis Barnes created an American comfort food menu that changes seasonally for freshness: fine. The management installed an applewood oven for wood-fired pizzas, pita sandwiches, and calzones: good. Barnes got fancy with the entr饳: yikes!
Firefly still looks great in that Queen Anne wayeven better if you count the three large bar paintings they inherited from the pub, painted on glass by a local artist. But the menu’s a mishmash of hits and misses. The pizzas and calzones are OKa wild mushroom, fresh thyme, and mozzarella calzone ($10.25) is goodbut it seems they never mastered the art of that applewood oven; crusts are tasty but disappointingly doughy.
At dinner, a prawn appetizer ($8.95) was naked and bland. The steak in the steak salad ($13.95) was well-seasoned and tender, but it was lost in too much lettuce. A spinach salad that promised strawberries but came with green apples and peas was too greentoo uniform in color and taste. Grilled pork chops ($16.95) were slightly overcooked, served with lumpy, tasteless mashed potatoes and an unnecessary nest of roasted vegetables; but they were topped with a delicious peach barbecue sauce, another side of fresh, crunchy, sweet peas, and a delightful roasted peach half. The best dish was a warm and buttery penne plate ($12.95) with fresh asparagus and peas, Parmesan, and lemon cream sauce. I’d try the pork chops again but I’d ask for them rarer. I’d revisit the calzone but request it crisper. I think my best betand theirswould be to keep it simple. Their bacon cheddar burger ($9.95) sounds just about right. But Firefly’s still waiting for food to match the decor.
