Fire & Spice Opens in Bridgeport With A+ Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken & More

Pollo a la brasa is one of Fire & Spice’s signatures.

A former Jamaican restaurant on Bridgeport’s Boston Avenue doesn’t only have two new tenants, it’s cooking up different culture’s cuisines, too.

At Fire & Spice, the concept is Peruvian, with some Indian and Pakistani, and good ol’ American burgers, cheesesteaks, and fried chicken.

Behind Fire & Spice is the team of Shiraz Choudhary and his chef, Emilio Malpartida, and if you’ve been to either of the Swift Fresh Market locations, two in Fairfield and one in Norwalk, you’re at least a little familiar with who they are.

“I’m in the gas station business, me and my brother, and we’ve been running several gas stations for a while, and a few years ago, we opened a new concept called Swift Fresh Market in Fairfield,” Choudhary says. “We put food in there, breakfast burritos, breakfast and lunch sandwiches.”

Choudhary said that simultaneously running gas stations and a kitchen was a bit overwhelming, especially for him, since he’s not a chef.

Burgers are either classic, with bacon, plus, they do mushroom & Swiss, spicy, and a surf and turf burger with wagyu and lobster that’s a nod to Malpartida’s past.

“I used to make lobster rolls in New Jersey, so I put this on the menu for people who want to treat themselves.”

Cheesesteaks, made with freshly shaved ribeye, have been a hit here. Each is served with onions and peppers on a locally made, soft, sesame seeded semolina roll.

“I found out about him (Emilio), we connected via email, and I asked him to take care of the kitchen side,” Choudhary says. “He managed it and we worked that way for a while. One day he came up to me with an idea for a concept that’s popular in other places. We looked at this property and I asked him if it would be a good fit, he said it would be, so we started working on this together. I bought this property, renovated it to this, brought in a charcoal oven from Peru and we decided to bring in burgers, cheesesteaks, loaded fries. At the same time, we wanted to have prepared food, too, because everyone nowadays is in a rush, so some of it, if you come in, it’s available right away. Sandwiches, stuff like that, five, 10 or 15 minutes.”

When you walk into Fire & Spice, what Choudhary and the team have ready to go are stewed chicken dishes, rice, veggies, and more, but the rest of it, cooked fresh in the back, are Peruvian specialties like pollo a la brasa (including that green sauce everyone loves), lomo saltado, plus, kebabs and pinchos.

The reason for the hodgepodge of cultures at Fire & Spice is because it was something Malpartida saw in other places, just not really in Connecticut.

“I wanted to do this here because I did it back in Orlando around the time when I was in culinary school, then I moved to Jersey and saw it there,” Malpartida says. “The meat is all halal and he (Choudhary) helps with the Indian stuff, because even though he’s not a chef, he knows those spices.”

Another hole in the market that Malpartida saw, and one of the reasons for their fancy charcoal rotisserie, otherwise known as a horno, is to make the classic Peruvian roast chicken the proper way.

Gotta properly green sauce that juicy chicken.

“Lots of Peruvian restaurants don’t even do pollo a la brasa right, and they don’t do it over charcoal,” Malpartida explains. “It’s marinated for 24 hours in 16 different spices, then it’s cooked over charcoal. It’s heated to about 400 degrees. The chicken goes in, it rotates, and it takes about an hour-and-a-half.”

What they added to the menu after their initial opening in October are the burgers and cheesesteaks, something Malpartida said his customers have been showing lots of interest in.

Fire & Spice’s cheesesteaks use shaved ribeye, that’s fresh, never frozen, and the house-ground burgers are a blend of chuck, brisket, and wagyu fat.

So far, Choudhary says the neighborhood response has been great, and he’s happy that Fire & Spice is even getting people to switch from their norms.

“Indian people are coming in and trying lomo saltado and Spanish people are coming in and getting beef and chicken shish and that’s pretty cool,” he says.

1304 Boston Avenue, Bridgeport
475.282.4604, eatfirespice.com