Firefly Grill and Wine Bar

It’s about time I gave Firefly a review. After all, it’s our Go To place when we want a lovely atmosphere, delicious food and moderate prices. It always feels like a special occasion even during Restaurant Week. Or any other week!
If you’re a fan of innovative cuisine and a uniformly GREAT staff, you might consider making this YOUR Go To place too!
What’s delicious? Pretty much everything I’ve ever tried. They continue to change things up on the menu seasonally, so I don’t want to recommend anything that’s no longer available (like the heirloom tomato salad). Suffice it to say everything that comes out of the kitchen has been thoughtfully prepared.
Oh, and if anyone in your party is GF, they have a truly delicious warm Brown Butter Cake with Vanilla bean gelato that would fool the heartiest flour eater! Just sayin’…

Im here for a business meeting and the staff is great. Food is excellent. I cant wait to come back.

Cozy little place with good food and atmosphere. They have good steak appetizer and nice selection of wines as well.

Food is great but we prefer to sit in the bar. Restaurant has a different vibe. We go there all of the time for «date night» but have been turned off by the owner/​manager. Twice recently we have gone to sit in the bar. There will be 2 empty seats but separated by patrons. We go in and would fill those seats but the manager will not ask people if they would mind scooting down a seat so we can sit together. He told us we could ask them! He doesn’t give any other seating options. So when we walk out he just says see ya later! He just lost business and didn’t seem to care. Great customer service means you at least attempt to please your willing and paying customers. Especially if you have seen them there numerous times! The rest of his staff is awesome

Very nice happy hour experience today and first time visit following suggestion from friends. Sat at bar during happy hour where a 25% discount applies to the bill between 430 and 630. Had a couple of Titos martinis which were expertly prepared icy cold and pure as the driven snow. Wild Boar Carnitas tacos were outstanding. Filet bites were ok. Bacon wrapped dates were insane (pay the $ 2.50 extra to go all dates and pass on olives). Burger was magnificent with attention to every detail and delicious. Nice locals crowd also with minimal barking seal/​pretender factor. Restaurant part had solid crowd upon departure.

We recently had dinner here with a large group. The food was excellent and so was the service. Jason was our server and he did a great job managing our table. We will definitely come back here again!

Awesome from start to finish. Great service from Crystal. Had a great St. Helena cab at a great price and the Spanish meatballs and bleu cheese mac and cheese to start. So good. Sea bass and short ribs for entrees were also killer. Sea bass was fantastic paired with a great risotto. We had the chocolate pâté and cinnamon gelato for dessert. Cinnamon gelato is my absolute favorite and so hard to find so for that alone I’ll definitely be back. Cozy ambiance, awesome food and great service from Crystal = we’ll be back soon!

Had dinner here a few weeks ago. The food was up to par, but the service and atmosphere of the restaurant was not to my appeal. Food gets a good rating, atmosphere would get a negative rating if possible.

Restaurant week has commenced!
I have been to Firefly’s a few years back for restaurant week & fell in love with their Lobster Crusted Beef Filet Mignon! Unfortunately, this is not a regular item on their menu & from time to time, they will bring it back for restaurant week!
The ambiance is beautiful & my boyfriend’s & I customer service was fantastic! We ordered:
Complimentary bread — Served warm with olive oil butter. To die for, we had to ask for seconds!
Baby Spinach Salad — With strawberries. The balsamic vinaigrette was delicious.
Duck Pot Pie — I was unsure about this dish because I rarely ever eat duck but my goodness, it was delicious!
Lobster Crusted Beef Filet Mignon — Mouthwateringly amazing! Melts in your mouth. & the sauce it comes with adds a little sweetness to the filet.
Pumpkin Cheesecake — Meh. Instead of a the traditional pie crust, there are pecans.
Chocolate Panna Cotta — Way, & I mean WAY, too chocolate-​y for our liking.

We tried the restaurant week menu for our first experience at Firefly. The Mahi and filet were both delicious. The berry cobbler and chocolate pannacotta were also great. The ceviche was not what was expected. Watery, lots of tomato, jalapeño, and radish. Strange. My real gripe was that we were never checked back on after being served our entrees. Other than that, the pros certainly outweighed the cons.

Nice ambiance, the food so-​so, I had the ‘Seafood Cataplana’ it was uneventful and way to salty, my husband had the soup of the day ‘Corn and Bacon’ that was not great and salt had to be added, then he had the ‘Wild Boar Carnitas Tacos’ very small portion, hard to find on the plate. My girlfriend had the ‘Grilled Salmon’ she said it was OK. The Service was good.
With so many good restaurants in the area, as a restaurateur you cannot not serve food that are not top grade. BUT maybe the greatest disappointment was that they did not have Pinot Grigio wine on their wine list (it shows on their menu on Unilocal) and yet they call themselves a wine bar.

We had dinner here tonight and we were all very impressed with the quality of the food. The Moroccan Spiced Rack of Lamb was perfectly cook medium rare with a nice crusty outside. Delicious, tender and juicy. My husband’s Grilled Salmon was also excellent. Crispy on the outside, moist and flavorful. Our friend raved about his Braised Angus Beef Short Rib.
The dining room is very attractively decorated. It’s perfect for a special occasion or a casual dinner. The service was friendly and attentive. To make it even more perfect, everything on the menu is 25% off during happy hour, every day of the week except Monday when it’s all evening long! And that includes wine and beer.

I went here with some friends for a PRIX FIXE menu and it was very good. The owner came over and spent some time with us and he was friendly.
The wine that was paired with the meal was exceptional! I will definitely go here again, after I save up some money.

I agree with Kristen S and others here that the Filet Mignon Bites and other appetizers had tiny portions.
We went for wine and apps and were disappointed with the Filet Mignon Bites portion, so much so that we did a test…
Our portion test…
The Filet Mignon Bites were the size of large cookie crumbs. ALL of the meat on the appetizer plate fit on 1 fork. (you read that correctly. All of the Filet Mignon Bites on the appetizer plate easily fit on my fork!) The mashed potatoes (which came with the Filet Mignon Bites) fit on 5 forkfuls. The prognosis… Not worth $ 14 bucks.
The crab cakes were quite yummy, but again, tiny portions. Prognosis… Not worth $ 14 bucks.
Summary…
I live in the neighborhood and really wanted this place to be great. But I won’t be coming back. And worth noting, it was empty at 7:30pm on a Friday night. Just us (for wine & apps) and one other couple (for a full dinner) were in the restaurant.

This is a really cozy spot great for dates. My wife and I really enjoyed the Filet Mignon appetizer and bot of our meals were delicious. I will say it was a tad pricey for the portions, however the food was extremely good. My wife also wanted something that wasn’t really on the menu (she wanted to combine disheS) and the waitress told her she would ask the chef, the chef said no problem! Extremely friendly staff, positive and happening atmosphere. Don’t let the strip mall location fool you — this is a great spot.

I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy a few wine paired tasting menus at Firefly. Each visit was a superb dining experience. Many of the dishes were standouts but I am especially fond of a pork belly and brussels sprout item I recently enjoyed. The pairing of wines with the foods was also top notch.

For Restaurant Week, I always choose a place offering filet mignon on the menu and for 2015, Firefly was the choice.
Appearance:
The place doesn’t look like much from the outside. It’s in a shopping center, but once you get inside has a much more cozy ambiance. My girlfriend and I both noticed the lighting. I’m not a interior designer and probably have never mentioned «I like the lighting» before, but did so here. The outside patio looked like a great place to grab some wine with friends and hang out, but we dined in the main dining area. They have a wall of wine, which I believe is mandated if you have «wine bar» in the title of your restaurant.
Food:
After the warm bread (get the balsamic vinegar with it) I started with the lobster arancine while my girlfriend got the wild mushroom soup. Was my first time having arancine and it was good– firm crust on the inside and rich, creamy inside. My girlfriend is about 10 weeks pregnant and all she ever wants to eat is soup and she loved the wild mushroom soup. I tried it and it was delicious even for a non-​pregnant diner.
We each got the «lobster crusted» filet mignon medium rare. Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear crusted, I think something covering the outside that has been friend/​seared/​grilled crispy. What it actually ended up being was a lobster butter on top. It was tasty, but not what I expected based on the name. The best part of the dish was the garlic mashed potatoes. I could eat an entire pot of those things. The steak itself was good. I think on the normal menu it goes for $ 30 which is a good price point for it. It wasn’t as good as Donovan’s La Jolla or Peohe’s in Coronado (which set the bar, for me), but it wasn’t that kind of high end steakhouse either. The medium rare was perfect and the red wine sauce was perfect flavoring.
Girlfriend is gluten/​dairy free so I got both desserts– basil goat cheese cheesecake and chocolate cake with gelato. The cheesecake was bomb! I wasn’t sure how I’d like the savory taste of basil with sweet cheesecake but it worked perfectly. I’d go back just for this (I’m not a dessert guy nor do I have a sweet tooth). The chocolate cake was dry and dense. Would steer clear of that.
Service:
We went during restaurant week, which can be hell for servers. Taking this into consideration, the service wasn’t bad. Our server seemed to be stretched a little thin, but we’re very, very low maintenance diners. With my gf pregnant, I was the only one drinking and so ordered by the glass. I had two glasses although I would have liked a third, but it took a while for the server to notice when my glass was empty. I think the owner was there that night (you can tell) and he was doing everything from seating ppl, to running food and prepping plates in the window. LOVED seeing that.
Overall, would definitely go back and will likely stop in for happy hour when meeting with a client just down the street.

It was not my choice to go here. The menu felt a little schizophrenic. Some great modern choices and some out dated old fashioned choices… Wedge salad, really??? Blue cheese filet with garlic mash??? I thought I was teleported back to 1989.
I got the tomato salad to start then mussels and clams for an entrée.
Salad was a nice salty sweet balance with great texture and flavor. Loved their burrata.
Mussels and clams were soft sweet and tasty. That was the most expensive mussels and clams I’ve ever had, since mussels go for about $ 2.50/# and clams$ 4.50/#…and there was only about 10oz on the plate.
hmmm?
Eigther way, food was good, presentation was awful; however, I’ll be back to try their braised boar…

My partner and I decided to try out Firefly Grill because it is literally a minute away from my office. We brought a friend that was visiting from Georgia here with us and I was beyond underwhelmed. If it wasn’t for the company, my partner and I would have walked right out.
The restaurant was dark and gloomy and the only bright side to the restaurant was that there was not a wait, which also can concerning on a Saturday night at 7pm.
We started off our meal with the Baby Kale Salad, two orders of the Crab Cakes, and an order of the Mussels and Clams. The salad was delicious, but a little over dressed and we didn’t realize that the sun dried tomatoes in the salad was actually proscuitto, had to scrap those aside. The waitress did not inform us that there was meat in the salad, when we told her that we were pescatarians. The crab cakes were overly salted and the aioli had no depth. The mussels and clams, the rosemary was a nice touch, but it the broth was lacking flavor and the mussels are clams were a little over cooked.
I ordered the salmon with the lemon pepper jam, the lemon jam was too strong and it took away from the salmon. The salmon was almost a little too well and ¹⁄₃ of the salmon was dry, being that cooked one would believe there would be better grill marks on the salmon, nope!!! My partner and our friend had the scallops and I had a piece and it was not even memorable.
I had a mochatini and once again, it was nothing special, they use Stoli, not my favorite brand of vodka. We all shared one dessert, our friend picked the berry cobbler, not memorable, except that it wasn’t overly sweet!
Basically, this restaurant was not memorable. I would never return here again. We probably should have tried out Craftsman Tavern instead. It was not worth the $ 275 that I spent.
Save yourselves the grief and drive to Pacifica Del Mar for the same type of food with more flavor and better prepared.

Had another quality dinner here tonight, the atmosphere is very relaxing and the owner is very attentive to the experience. To start off we had the seared filet mignon bites which was the best part of the meal. We then had cream of asparagus soup with mixed green salad. The soup was incredible, really enjoyed this !!!
We followed this with spanish meatballs and their muscles and clams, it might be that we are just not huge fans of clams in general but these clams were quite large. They did not taste as good as some of the other clams I have had in the past that were much smaller in the bay area. This left a very salty taste in the mouth, maybe it is the clams were too large. I want to openly admit I am not a clam expert I just did not like these at all though, perhaps others will enjoy the large clams.
Grilled salmon and blue cheese crusted filet mignon were the main entrees. The salmon was ok, it was not as good as the last time we dined here when it was served over couscous. The filet was outstanding very similar to the appetizer (¹⁰⁄₁₀).
The deserts were not that good either, we had cinnamon expresso crème brûlée and the lemon mascarpone cheesecake. Neither of these really tasted that good, the crème brûlée was runny not like a custard this was very thin. The cheesecake tasted dry and broke into piece that were hard.
Some of the items were five stars then some of the others were one star, I think we might have ordered some items that were risky given our history of what we like. Overall this experience was three stars rating. Perhaps if we stick with dishes we usually like there will be a five star review next time.