We were hungry after attending the Cans Beer Festival and enjoying the music of Ghost Montrose. We went walking for food and wound up at a place I always noticed when we passed on the way to other places and had heard good things of, but never experienced: Fire On The Mountain (Ok, I linked the website… but it sucks). They have two locations in Portland and offers wings- I believe 12 different barbecue and hot sauce options with a rotating extra special sauce which will be different depending on the location. When we went up to order they had a little sample bin with celery sticks so we could sample to pick out the winners that would make it to the put it on chicken round- thoughtful gesture.

The service model is that you go up to the counter to order, and they hand you your soda glass or your pint of beer (they have several local microbrew drafts) and a number, and you seat yourself and wait for your food to appear. You can choose a differenct sauce for every six wings, and it comes with the expected ranch dressing and celery sticks. The chicken wings are not very meaty, though they have great sauces, and the wings do come drenched in the sauce.

I need more then celery and ranch as a palate cleanser between meat and sauce, so I also ordered a small order of tater tots and their Homemade Blue Cheese Stuffed Fried Mushrooms which comes with Chili Garlic Aioli. I found the breading around the mushrooms to be really salty. The tater tots were exactly as you would expect. Is there ever a time when tater tots cannot be added to a meal?

FOTM is very Portland in that it is very earth friendly- they compost all their waste (their products are reusable plastic baskets or paper or corn products), support biodiesel, the chicken they use is free-range (is that why they are skinny?) and… they have a vegetarian option. I’m not talking about just the celery sticks, or a salad, or the fact they have deep fried Twinkes and Oreos for dessert.

They have a vegetarian version so that even non-meat eaters can enjoy their various sauces. In this initial visit, they were advertising vegan drumsticks, and so they were ordered. The “bone” is I think a stick of sugar cane. After I chewed on it to try to identify it, I realized it was one with El Jefe sauce and so my tongue was on fire shortly afterward, and my lips tingly still 30 minutes later. Both photos below are the vegan drumsticks…

I didn’t try the Fried Nutter Butters, but here they are for posterity