Firehook Bakery

I tried it twice, really hoping the second time would be better, but no luck. Unfriendly staff doesn’t smile or greet you– they seem to have trouble with English too. My friend got a soggy blah sandwich where she found tiny black hairs in. She was beyond grossed out, it looked like shaving stubble. It’s so bare bones with no soul. The machines howled and were really loud and unpleasant. They also slammed dishes around in the front, so it’s less relaxing coffee house and more like you set up in a restaurant kitchen. Lastly, there is no place to put your dirty dishes, there was a stack of dirty dishes on the food case where we left them, super gross. Not hard to set up a busing station! Last time I went, we sat outside. When our dry sandwiches came, the server would not bring them to the table, she stood at the door and waited for me to get up and get them from her at the door. The vanilla chai was ok. Drinks are not cute, or packaged at all. I don’t think this place would pass a health code test.

This location is nice and spacious with lots of tables and some outlets spread out to get some work done. Bring a laptop because there is wifi. Service is fast and I would order the customized omelette for breakfast and lunch. Its a great healthy, protein-​packed option and you can change up its contents with up to three ingredients, including tomatoes, onions, cheese, mushrooms etc. Pasteries and baked items are standard. I would not go out of my way for the pasteries. All in all: a good place to do work outside of the office, library, starbucks, home, etc.

I had a letdown experience at Firehook’s other Old Town location, but In the mood for something sweet, I stopped in to this store, indecisive and with hungry eyes for all the carbs. ALL THE CARBS. I settled on some kind of raspberry bar, with just the right amount of sweetness (not overly sugary, which was a good thing), mixed with nuttiness and even a hint of saltiness maybe? It hit the spot. Will be back to try some of their Zaatar crackers when it cools down for some good soup-​making weather.

Delicious bread! I never had c offe in there but often buying bread and their fruit cake. Very tasty :)

Cute coffee shop and bakery. House coffee was okay. All of the baked goods looked amazing. I just grabbed a homemade pumpkin granola bar that I would get again. Reasonable prices for the location.

We expected a bit more «presentation’ drinks in paper mugs, pastries in plastic carry out containers. Pop music blasting while listening the chit-​chat of the sales girl on her cell phone in Hispanic. If you expecting ‘charm’ keep walking.

Coffee was alright, brownie was alright as well. Nothing special, but I have had worse.
Table we sat at was the most wobbly I have ever seen, like afraid to put your coffee on it wobbly, so that was a little weird.

Stopped in yesterday for something to eat for lunch. I like that they have pre-​made sandwiches. I got a tunafish sandwich and a water. It took a long time for one of the staff to come up from the back even though I saw one of them staring at me while I was standing at the counter for five minutes.
Service does seem a little inexperienced. And sadly, the sandwich was really not that good. The bread was old and I would up pitching the other half of it. Oh well.

I’m not much of a hot drink consumer, but 4 solid stars for their awesome pastries. Everything has been delectable! I would definitely recommend the Ham & Cheese Croissant. It is made with a high-​quality Swiss cheese and can be enjoyed at room temperature or reheated.
The Chocolate Croissant is equally delicious. The personal size Pecan Pie has tons of nuts rather than the gooey stuff which is a pro for me. The apple cake which comes in a loaf was awesome.
The prices aren’t high especially for practically being on the water. Instead of going to the Starbucks on the corner, head down the block to this little place and be glad you did!

My bad experience may partly be my own fault, but this store needs drastic improvement or it deserves to be shut down.
Went in to get a coffee and a chai latte while walking around Old Town with my fiancée. The staff were two teenage girls. They handled the chai latte fine, but the cappuccino I ordered came out tasting like dirty dishwater. I think the machine needs a thorough cleaning or the staff on hand needs to be retrained. I could tell they were a little taken aback by my order and weren’t sure what to do.
The other problem with this location was the cleanliness. It needs a fresh coat of paint and a good scrubbing. It was in pretty gross condition on a good weather day: no tracked in dirt or rain.

Got a breakfast sandwich and a latte. Solid food!

After multiple visits, I have never tasted a food or drink here that’s been particularly good.
The service is slow, and the staff always seems to be inexperienced in the espresso and bakery department. It’s really quite a shame to see a company resort to such cheap labor.
There is not a refined way for the staff to track each customer’s order, so the orders often either get lost or made wrong. I’ve had this occur with both food and drinks.
During one particular experience, I ordered a croissant with egg and cheese. Expecting a fresh pastry, I took a bite out of it. The egg was cold, and the croissant itself was overly oily with butter. Disgusting.
Out of the many local coffee shops in Old Town, this one probably falls among one of the worst. I can’t really recommend this one to many.

This is a fine little coffee shop and bakery. The coconut macaroon was one of the best I’ve ever had. The huge gingersnap my hubby ordered was ok — but he liked my macaroon better. Our capucinos were decent. And on a cold spring day, they got my business because it was warm and toasty inside– which is never the case at Starbucks.
Down 2 stars because I couldn’t tell what theyre about. Décor and seating seems random — but not is a cute coffe shop kind of way. And I really didn’t get the impression they do their own baking, but maybe they do. Overall, this place could do what they do better.

Such a disappointment to say the least. The website is beautiful and I was told that this place was great for desserts but no such luck.
The first issue was that I had a difficult time communicating with the person behind the counter. English was not her first language so two out of the five things I got were wrong. She wasn’t too terribly friendly and simply wanted to get-​the-​job-​done.
As I just said, I purchased five things… a chocolate chip cookie, sugar cookie, brownie, petit four, mini-​pie. The cookies were dry and had quite a bit of crumb to them. The brownie was fine but something I could totally make at home. The petit four was not really a petit four in the sense that it is two thin layers of cake with a filling in between. Rather, this was a chunk of white cake — which wasn’t dense enough to hold it’s shaped covered with a powdered sugar and water icing. Gross. The mini pie was a huge disappointment. The filling was fruit based and ok but both the top and bottom crusts were so thick that the fruit to crust ratio was really off. I want a flaky pie crust, not a ¼″ pressed graham cracker wanna-​be thing.
Last thing to note, the place needed a good cleaning. I’ll give it to you that I was there in the afternoon but with the sun shining in the windows, there was a lot of dirt being exposed.
Would I go back? No.

Bottom line up front: «AVOID.»
Very few independant coffee shops will ever get a bad review from me. And this Firehook meets the minimum criteria for a bad review.
Wife raved for a week about the cherry scones and coffee Firehook had. Okie, let’s go. Get there this morning, they have a line, but not a big one. But they don’t have any cherry scones. No biggie, they have apple cinnamon pecan scones, and I like apples, right? Nope, not a single flake of apple in the dry bready crummy, scone that I get. Barely any taste at all. Mostly like a biscuit you get from Red Lobster.
Now on to the coffee… order a large Latte with Soy. After ordering, they find out they are out of Soy milk. Who runs out of Soy milk at 8:30am on a Saturday morning of a three day weekend? They offer to make something else, except I can’t use dairy/​milk at the moment. So, I ask for a refund. Well, they don’t know how to do refunds. What? Manager has to do it. After about five minutes, I get my money back — minus the tax. Yes, shortchanged. Get a very kurt «sorry» — like it was difficult on their part to smile and admit it was their fault.
So, imho, someone needs to replace the manager at this store. I can see the potential, since we’re on the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria, so getting a good and returning client tell is not all that hard. People walk past here, and there are enough people who hate the Starbucks about 5 paces away — that if the food was good, and the service was good, they’d have a line out the door — like Starbucks does.
Anyway, I expect this review to get flagged soon for some violation of the company’s «Do no wrong» policy, which was apparent in the service I recieved. Thankfully, I don’t heed to that sort of intimidation either, and walked out the door, turned right, walked about a dozen paces and got a Venti Soy Pumpkin Spice Latte. And that made me happy.

I was in the area in the morning on Sunday and wanted coffee and the options were this or Starbucks. I am happy that I chose Firehook!
First, the coffees labelled «large» are legitimately large. So many of these fancy coffee shops offer «large» coffees and what you are getting is more of a medium at best. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. I am happy to say that here the large cups are actually decent sized.
Second, the coffee is self-​serve. I like putting milk and cinnamon into my coffee and prefer to pour the coffee myself so I can leave the perfect amount of room at the top. I really liked their self service station and wish more coffee shops offered this.
Third, there were a lot of good-​looking baked goods like bread and croissants and donuts. I scarfed down a glazed donut and it was delicious. I didn’t notice any frou frou cupcakes with barely any frosting on them. This is another positive.
So in all, pretty good place. It is not the cheapest in the world, but I do feel good feeling like I am supporting a local place. It has a cute little seating area and the server was friendly. I would definitely be back next time I am walking around there and having a coffee craving.

This was a very cute little coffee shop. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the iced mocha that I had as for the cranberry muffin… well that was very dry…

We loved the chocolate-​almond croissants! Loved them so much we went back for an encore breakfast. Prices for pastries and muffins were really good, and the quality was excellent.
Coffee was just ok, but the pastries made up for everything!

This review is mostly for their dessert bars… after just chowing through an ENTIRE coconut lemon bar (I feel sick, but I couldn’t stop, and it was worth it), I think it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Creamy, sweet, luscious lemon with a hint of coconut flavor and flaky browned coconut on top.
Their raspberry cream cheese brownies are also mad tasty.
The sandwiches – also excellent – bread is sometimes dry, could use a little more cheese, IMHO, but everything in my life needs more cheese.
Minus one star for crappy coffee and breakfast sandwiches (microwaved egg? It gets this weird foamy texture… yuck!). But if you stick with pastries and lunch… yum.

A-​OK definitely describes Firehook. It is small and always a little crazy in this location, especially due to Mommy & Me time during the weekdays (had I been paying attention to all the strollers parked outside, I never would have visited). So I have never been able to sit here with a drink and relax.
But the drink I get, an iced skim mocha. is decent, and the small is actually good-​sized. Their pastries are really good — especially my most recent purchase, a Guinness cupcake. Cookies are tasty. Bread is OK, but there are places I like better. Staff is efficient, though not overly friendly — they are just ensuring the line moves quickly. I would not go out of my way to visit, but if you are walking by (especially if you get something to go), Firehook will not disappoint.