Following other recent updates on restaurant closures, waterfront eatery Fire Rock Pizza Kitchen has closed. 
According to a sign pasted to the front door, the restaurant is only temporarily closed due to construction on Flagler Drive. And indeed, there is quite a bit of construction around the restaurant right now.
But some former employees dispute the “temporary” part of that sign, saying that they think Fire Rock Pizza is closed for good.
One waitress, who now works at nearby restaurant Hot Pie Pizza, said the store abruptly closed and employees were told nothing about it reopening.
Jason Cardinal, an entertainer who performed at Fire Rock Pizza, said he received a text a couple weeks ago saying that the restaurant was closing.
He said his Thursday evening shift had already previously been dropped because of slow sales at the restaurant. He now fills his Saturday evening shift at the Ritz-Carlton hotel.
Construction on the street outside Fire Rock.
“I think the construction really killed them,” Cardinal said. “There was like no one in there. The road was closed, so there was no way to get there.”
The landlord for the space said it could not comment on its tenants.
But John Ries, who worked with owners Delores and David Sawyer to come up with the Fire Rock Pizza concept and who co-owned the restaurant until a disagreement with the Sawyers, says he thinks Fire Rock just couldn’t keep up in this environment.
Of course, Ries now owns competing restaurant Hot Pie Pizza.
Fire Rock has at least one lien against it — a $3,500 lien from Hood Depot International Inc. Ries said he has also filed another lien against the company to get back the oven and other kitchen equipment in the restaurant that he says he owns.
Restaurant broker Richard Lackey said that David Sawyer told him that they were bringing in someone new to help create a new concept for the restaurant.
When I called him, though, Sawyer disputed that, saying he’s not opening a new restaurant concept. Before declining to comment further, he said that “I believe it (the restaurant) will be reopening.”
Lackey said he thinks that, despite the choice real estate near the water, the restaurant will continue to struggle unless it has “the firepower of a major restaurant operator or company. They have the money, the marketing and the know-how to operate a restaurant in this environment.”
What do you think? Did you eat at Fire Rock Pizza? Would you like to see it return? What other restaurants would you like to see in downtown?
Fire Rock Pizza Kitchen. Palm Beach Post file photo.
