Friday, February 5, 2021

Catching Fire in Brea


 Fire Wings

985 East Birch St. Suite D

Brea, CA 92821


Due to the pandemic, we have only seen my family a handful of times. Mostly for holidays for a brief time, a few meals at restaurants when outside dining was permitted, and this trip to see them was for a long-overdue family picture. I have not aged much since our last picture over a decade ago, but my three nieces have all grown into beautiful young women, and we definitely needed a new picture to document their transformation. 

As usual, it was my job to come up with a place for the nine of us to eat after a hard afternoon of modeling. It's pretty challenging to come up with a spot that everyone will like. My nieces are pretty picky eaters, my parents like modest prices, my sister really just wants a place that she can enjoy a beer with her meal, and I always want to find the best food possible. I ended up going with Fire Wings in Brea because everyone seems to be on a chicken kick these days. 

Fire Wings is a chain from up in Northern California. They are planning a significant expansion in our area, with their website stating that they have spots opening soon in Irvine and Fountain Valley, but this Brea location is their first in OC. It's located across the street from the Brea Mall in the Brea Marketplace Shopping Center, which also includes Sprouts, Stonefire Grill, and CVS Pharmacy. 

Now that you have the lay of the land, let's focus on the menu at this chicken-centric establishment. Fire Wings features 21 different wing flavors, they offer bone-in and boneless, and you have the option of getting your chicken as part of a combo meal or by the piece in increments of 10, 20, 40, or more. Prefer your chicken in the form of a sandwich? They have three types for you to choose from. There's also a quartet of salads and fifteen sides to pick from to accompany your meal. With so many choices I was a little overwhelmed but I eventually managed to pull it together and select a good deal of food to try. Let's take a look at it. 





Naturally, I had to try their wings first, so I went with the 20 Piece Wings ($21.09). With this option, you can pick three different wing flavors to create your own personal sampler plate. With 21 different flavor profiles, it was a little tough to narrow it down. I eventually went with the mango habanero, garlic parmesan, and the unusual peanut butter. I was pretty pleased with the wings here. They had plenty of meat on them, they were fried well with a good crunch to them, and all the flavors I had were pretty stellar. I liked the mango habanero the best, with a slight heat to it, finished with a burst of sweetness coming through at the end of each bite. The dry rub garlic parmesan was another favorite, with plenty of flavors and it highlighted the crunchy exterior of each piece. The peanut butter was interesting, with most of the nuttiness coming from the sprinkling of crushed peanuts over the top of the wings, while the sauce kind of resembled the same one used for the mango habanero, minus the heat. Still good, and I'd actually get these three flavors again after trying different ones on future visits. I only used the provided ranch for the garlic parmesan wings, which shows that these wings could stand on their own. 


As if I did not have enough on my plate with the 20 wings, I also tried the Nashville Fire Sandwich ($8.99). This breaded chicken sandwich comes with coleslaw, pickles, and spicy sauce. The sandwich comes in four heat levels; hot, extra hot, super fire, and super hot fire. I went with the super fire heat level and it was very spicy even for me, who can tolerate spice pretty well. I'd go down to the extra hot heat level next time, so I could enjoy the sandwich a little more. The chicken itself had a nice crunchy breading to it, while the chicken inside was just juicy enough. I liked the coleslaw, but they could have used a bit more sauce on this, so I used my remaining ranch instead, which seemed to help with cooling this sandwich down a bit. I also have to point out that this picture doesn't really show it as well as the picture you will see below, but the buns they were using on this day were almost burnt on top, which kind of detracted from the insides of the sandwich. 




Katie has never been a big fan of wings because, like many others, she's not fond of eating off of the bones. She instead ordered the 4 Piece Boneless Chicken Mini Meal ($5.39). This meal also came with fries and a drink, a pretty good deal for lighter eaters. She picked the original buffalo sauce to coat her boneless wings. She liked the flavor of the traditional sauce and the chicken inside was pretty solid. Since she's doing the keto thing she left the fries to me, and they were fine, but nothing really made them stand out. She also selected this House Salad ($5.49) to round out her meal. This salad was made up of a romaine and spring mix, sliced red onion, cucumbers, tomatoes, and grated cheese. It usually comes with Italian dressing, but she opted for blue cheese dressing, which she loved. This salad did the trick, as it featured fresh veggies and was pretty good sized. 



My sister had the Mozzarella Sticks ($4.99) and the 6 Piece Salt and Pepper Boneless Chicken ($10.79). I tried one of the mozzarella sticks and they were pretty basic, and she agreed that they really did not wow her. She was, however, a fan of the chicken. The breading was crunchy and the salt and pepper flavor came out big time in this dry rub. It went well with the well-made ranch dressing. She ended up enjoying her meal very much, even as her daughters bickered at the table. Oh, the joys of motherhood. 



Here's a quick shot of my brother in law's meal, the Large Chili Cheese Fries ($5.99) and his Original Chicken Sandwich ($8.99). You can see from the above picture of the sandwich what I was talking about with the bun being baked a little too long. He liked this original chicken sandwich version, which comes with pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayo. The chili cheese fries failed to make much of an impression. The fries were topped with a meaty chili that resembled the one from Wienerschnitzel and liquid cheese. I'm always partial to grated cheese, so I did not try these, but he felt they were just okay, and nothing he would get on future visits to Fire Wings. . 

This was a good place for our afterparty for our family picture. The menu was diverse enough that it allowed even the pickiest eater in our group, (my niece Lillie), to find something to keep her happy. I'd sum up Fire Wings as a better version of Buffalo Wild Wings, as far as the wings go. I liked the chicken and flavors here better than at most wing spots, but the sides were just average, almost bordering on mediocre. It's probably best to focus mainly on the chicken here, which should keep you pretty happy. The prices were not too outrageous, and I liked that they offered plenty of options depending on how hungry you happen to be while visiting here. You can get anywhere from 4 to 100 wings, and if you can consume 100 wings in a single seating, my hat goes off to you. Our family picture turned out fine, and when placed side by side with the one we took ten years ago, we all seem to be aging like a fine wine. 

Out of five dinosaur bones, (because brea in Spanish translates to tar, and dinosaur bones are found at the La Brea Tar Pits in LA), five being best to zero being worst, Fire Wings gets 3 dinosaur bones. 

For more information about Fire Wings, head to their website here: https://www.firewings.com/ 

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