Firewood At Metreon

For a food court option, this isn’t bad; the chicken strips were good. the flatbreads were good but really hard to cut through.

My hubby and I used to go the Firewood Café located in the Macy’s cellar near Macy’s Women SF. We had their fresh garden salad, Margherita pizza (fresh Roma tomatoes and basil) so light and thin, and their juicy herb roasted rotisserie chicken. We were sad when they closed that location, but now we’ve discovered there’s one in the Metreon. We’ve dropped by a few times, and they were remodeling. Hopefully the remodel is completed, so we can eat there again soon. We really love their food because it’s fresh, affordable, and delicious.

Are they really under remodel or is that euphemism for out of business? I remember coming here when Metreon was first built, having pizzas after seeing the Moebius garage. Decent food I guess but it has been a long time since I’ve set foot in this area.

It sounds so simple, but… I love their Margherita pizza and their caesar salad. I can’t help it. It’s the perfect meal so why mess with it?
You order and pay at the cashier, then bring your assigned number to a table. They’ll find you once your food is ready. As far as food court dining goes, it’s one of my favorites at the Metreon, right before a film or when I’m strolling around Yerba Buena Gardens.

I loove the salads here. They are really fresh & huge.
Personally, I think 8 $ or 9 $ is a bit much for a salad, but hey, it’s the metreon; everything is overpriced.

My guy ordered spaghetti w/​meatballs, I ordered chicken pesto pizza and it was the bomb! I love how the crust is not thick, oily, nor crispy. it was just right.
What made it all the better was that I won a bouncy ball from the claw machine that night.

Only THE-​BEST-​SALAD place around. The salads are absolutely massive and the topping choices are abundant and always delicious. When I eat a salad, I want to eat a massive salad. I have the expectation that I should be able to be as full after a salad as one would be after a pasta dinner.
Oh man, I’ll have to cut this review short because just the thought of Firewood’s salads piled high inside one of those perfectly enticing glass bowls is making me salivate.
I have never strayed from the salad to personally order any other item off their menu, but some of my friends have ordered their pasta dishes and I sampled. They too were delicious, but honestly– drop what you are doing right now and go veg up.

The Firewood Café @ the Metreon is great! I come here about twice a week for lunch. While I can’t speak on the whole menu, Their salads and pastas are great! The food comes very quickly (I order salmon and it usualy takes 2 – 3 minutes longer but no complaints). And they are incredibly consistent, I always leave with the same satisfaction.
I left one star off because it is a little pricey
Caesar salad w/​Salmon = $ 15
The Salads are HUGE! So I personally think it’s worth it

This should really get 2.5 stars, but the good math student in me can’t help but round up.
This place was surprisingly BAD. It’s like a glorified mall food court meal, or like a more terrible version of Pasta Pomodoro. I guess that’s what you get when you’re in need of a quick bite before a movie at the Metreon.
We came here tonight for dinner before a movie, and as soon as I saw the menu, I gave it a loud, resounding blah. Pastas, pizzas, salads, soups. So terribly generic. It wouldn’t be fair to compare this to, say, Chez Panisse or anything else extraordinary, so I’ll compare it to similar, food-​court-​ish eateries.
WIN:
+ I like the fact that you just order and then they bring you the food. It cuts down on unnecessary, extra service.
+ It does have all your standard, safe, non-​frightening foods, so I guess if you’re a tourist (and yeah, if you’re here, you’re probably a tourist) in the area, you’ll have something reliable to turn to.
+ It’s pretty quick, and it’s conveniently located if you’re in a hurry.
FAIL:
— I think it’s pretty expensive for very generic-​tasting, mediocre food. And the portions are pretty small.
— Their special Firewood Sauce (a blend of cream and marinara) tastes like something I’d be able to make myself. Why should I pay money for something I can whip up quickly with my own ingredients?
— And finally: FOOD NOT TASTY. TOO SALTY. DO NOT WANT.
Recommendations: There are much better places you can eat at if you’re at the Metreon. Better yet, movie theaters are generally more lax these days about bringing your own food into the theater, so I think you should do what I do and bring a Vietnamese sandwich with you into the theater. Go with a girl and ask her to hide it in her purse. Just make sure to clean up all the crumbs after eating.

The food is very good here.
The staff members are sort of slow to warm up (perhaps we got them on a bad day, but that shouldn’t matter) but they’re pretty receptive to what you want.
The place was fairly clean, but I wouldn’t eat off the plates supplied on each table with the bowl of olives or whatever they were. That just doesn’t seem sanitary in anyway.
The Silverware is what you’d find in a hospital cafeteria, just pre-​packaged fork and butter knife with a napkin. And even if you get a salad, you have to ask for silverware. At least we had to.
Portions are generous, and atmosphere is pretty good. I’ll be back.

I always get the half honey di-​jon glazed chicken. I also like the house tortellini.
Staff is friendly and quick.
And yes, they do charge the 4% restaurant health care fee here.
I was looking at my receipt and there is a 5% discount for ordering over the phone for pickup? I’ve never heard of that before. I need to do this more often.
I do have to warn you if you eat here, do NOT eat the oilves in the little dish on the table. I made that terrible mistake one time. The olives tasted funny and I was feeling really sick that night.

yum yum. The pizza was good (from the rest of the reviews, i gather that the pasta stinks). The Soup de’jour was good too: Cream of Mushroom. I’d eat here again if, like last time, I was in a hurry and needed some good fast-​casual eatz.
I also lost my wallet here and they kept it. nice ppl

3 ½ stars?! Has everyone lost their tastebuds? I feel like I’m usually on the generous side with star ratings, but seriously-there’s no way to put this more delicately-​the food here sucks.
I’ve been here a couple times, my judgment compromised by extreme hunger pangs, and each time I am astounded at the tasteless, overpriced poor-​quality meal laid before me. Regardless of appetite, I have never gotten through more than half of my meal or anyone I was with eat more than half of their meal. And I hang with good eaters. Both times I’ve been here, I’ve left (after paying like $ 12) to pursue other dining options. I want to un-​eat everything I’ve ever eaten here. It «tastes» like dorm dining hall buffet food.
I feel really really guilty after one-​star rants (which are few and far between for me… sorry), but I have a duty to my fellow man: don’t waste your time here, folks.
If you are absolutely FORCED to eat here, I guess the least crappy thing I’ve tasted is the pizza. So I would advise going with that. I guess.

I met up with an old friend of mine here to catch up, he suggested this place as he works for the one at the airport. Immediately what I saw were over priced along with salads and sandwiches. They serve brick oven style pizza, really thin and crispy. I decided to order the 5 mushroom pizza and my friends got some ravioli. My pizza was good, though not extraordinary and not really worth the price when I can have it somewhere else for less. It’s a chain though, so I suppose they think they can do that. Food was decent, but I wouldn’t eat here again unless someone else was paying.

Hands down, this place has the best Margherita Pizza I have ever had, in my entire life!
I still miss this pizza and still reference it when I have a bad batch here in Texas. I whimper a bit and just want to cry in my drink when I think of the pizza I’m missing out on.

You often forget that the Metreon is still around, especially since the glorious Westfield across the street opened its doors. I remember, though, back when it was the bomb– with brand new theaters up stairs, cool eateries downstairs, and a kick-​ass Discovery Channel store on the ground floor. Now those days are pass, with less foot traffic through the place and the Discovery Channel store having left a while back.
In any case, those eateries are still there, catering to movie-​goers looking for a quick bite before their shows or tourists who wandered in and stayed. I came by to have food at Firewood because its just that much closer to work. I decided to have the penne with proscuitto, shitake mushrooms, and peas in a white wine cream sauce. The pasta was tasty, though the cream sauce was a little too thick and rich. Good with the side of bread that the pasta came with, but the sauce congealed if you didn’t stir it around every once in a while. The «proscuitto» was probably ham because there was so much of it in the pasta– I can’t imagine that they would use real proscuitto quite so freely.
3 stars for a decent meal for a decent price. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the 4% «health» surcharge that so many SF eateries charge nowadays, but I can understand why they did it. I would be back to try the salads, which looked huge, as well as the pizza, which looked decent.

So it would probably get five stars but honestly the reason I come here is because I’m usually avoiding the HEART ATTACK LOVEFEST that is Buckhorns. Buckhorns is totally my abusive lover and somedays I have to get away even though I convince myself that getting pushed down the stairs, or worse, getting a little heavier around the middle, is true love.
I tend to stick to the pasta here. The tortellini is awesomely bombtastic. I like the chicken version and the vegetarian one pretty equally. Usually I get the Firewood sauce (combo of marinara and cream sauce) but was pleasantly surprised when they f’ed up and gave me just the cream sauce. I like to pretend that heavy cream is healthy and we ALL NEED MORE CALCIUM IN OUR DIETS RIGHT!!!
Yeah, this usually leaves me overwhelmingly full. It’s located in the Metreon which is pretty much the most useless place in San Francisco but it’s right by Yerba Buena Gardens and isn’t as crowded as eating in the mall food court.
If there’s one thing I hate more than calories it’s crowds.
(Also, I don’t have an eating disorder I swear. EVERYONE EATS A BOX OF OREOS EVERY NIGHT BEFORE BED RIGHT!!! WITH MILK? CALCIUM!)
/​crazy

What can I say? I love pizza. There’s never a time when I’m not in the mood for pizza. I will eat pizza for breakfast, lunch, linner, and dinner. While I do have my choice favorite pizza places in San Francisco, I love Firewood at Metreon for their Italian sausage pizza. It’s tasty and thin crust and it’s just the right size for me.
They have some other good pastas and stuff, too, but I will take their Italian sausage pizza any day.

I decided to eat here for lunch since we were in the area for museums.
I picked:
Corn chowder soup $ 4.25. comes w/​2 small pieces of baguette.
small side Caesar salad $ 3.75. Not enough dressing for me.
Ask for tap water get a huge glass w/​ice. Nice.
Total $ 8.70 w/​tax and they take credit cards.
Taste was ok, soup was better than salad.

Firewood is a nice little restaurant in the Metreon food court.
I’ve been looking at the menu for years, and I’ve been wanting to eat here for a while. Now that the Downtown Center has blown away my resistance to high-​price food court restaurants, it was easy to walk in and explore.
There were free olives at the table. Margaret ordered a Caesar salad, but it was more than a Caesar. It also had three toppings and roast chicken. The bowl was very large, and she enjoyed it. She also ordered an Aquafina. I ordered a pizza of the day, which had artichokes and fresh tomatoes on a cracker-​thin crust. It was salty, but very tasty! My beverage was Diet Pepsi. The total for all of this was about $ 25.