Firepop is very new; my friend mentioned it to me amongst other hip and cool restaurants in the Newtown/Enmore area, and this one appealed to me quite a bit – I love places that cook with fire, and the description of the place sounded right up my alley – chicken hearts! Chicken tails! Padron peppers!

Look at the fish bones drying for stock!

My friend and I went for the a la carte menu since I wanted the chicken bits that weren’t included in the set menu, and it turns out that it’s possible to try all the things on the menu (not the mains or salads unless you have a super big appetite). We went through the priority items first and then later went back to get the things we missed!

This was the lamb marrow and it was my first time eating lamb marrow, it was good!

They didn’t have oysters that day, but instead had some really nice hapuka with really tasty watermelon radish!

This is a terrible picture of a really nice wagyu cube. It’s not as dark as it looks, and the flavour was good and it was nice and tender! I actually think this would go really nicely with some wasabi rather than the garlic chips, but I’m not complaining!

Wagyu slices, which did come with wasabi! It was also soy marinated so it had a great flavour.

And here are the chicken tails! I love that fatty goodness, it’s so bad but so good!

The chicken hearts were really delicious too, maybe one day I should think about possibly cooking with chicken hearts?

They actually had a grilled tofu option which was really interesting, had a slightly spicy sauce if I remember and was quite enjoyable. I had been complaining lately how a lot of cheaper, almost fast food places (and even not cheap fast food places!) often don’t do tofu well – I have no idea how. It’s so simple to make it tasty, and Firepop demonstrates this well!

Ahahaha the padron peppers, with a side of shishito peppers. I love chilli roulette, and there was a frozen long grape on the side if we got the spicy one. Because I have no spice tolerance though, it’s hard to tell if I actually got a super spicy one. I think I can gauge whether or not something is spicier than normal for me; the final padron pepper was noticeably hotter than the previous one I ate, and the heat continued to build up well after I stopped eating more, so I imagine I might have hit the jackpot, and so I asked for an extra frozen grape. I should really freeze some grapes as edible sweet ice!

And here’s where we went back to the top of the menu and ordered the things we skipped. Corn ribs with a mountain of cheese, one of their popular dishes, and with good reason! Very tasty corn!

The lamb was also very impressive, I actually don’t eat enough lamb but whenever I order it, it’s so good. I really think I should look into learning to cook more cuts of lamb too; I didn’t cook lamb forequarter chops very well once (I had no idea how long to cook them for) and usually end up specialising in backstrap and cutlets, both of which are some of the most expensive cuts ever. Lamb ribs and lamb leg seem to be grisly? I have no idea why it’d be grisly? So shoulder is the only cut that I really enjoy slow cooking – it’s so good! Maybe one day I need to find a cut that I can short cook well.

And the pork belly, a classic, tasty stick!

Okay, this panna cotta was actually amazing. The chef mentioned that they make everything from scratch, even the buttermilk, which is really cool! There was rhubarb and strawberry that cut through the panna cotta nicely, and also the drops of olive oil in there were really nice too! The panna cotta had a texture similar to the type of custard that Teeter Bakery in Perth makes, it’s smooth, rich, very, very nice!

What a cute little restaurant that makes tasty food! It’s so simple and we could try everything without feeling overly full (I managed to save enough stomach space to go a few doors down and try out some vegan salmon sushi lol – which was fun to eat!). Hopefully they’ll do well!