Reno Reviews: Fuego

                Fuego is a bar that used to be a bastion of the community. Now it’s more of a plight, and a terrible thing to look at. This pub used to be owned by some pretty cool people, but they left due to familial circumstances, and left it in the hands of someone who is more interested in making money than they are serving the community. This review is going to be somewhat scathing, so please hang in there with me on this, because this is a place that deserves some real tender loving care for the community it’s in, and not the rampant commercialism and promoting that the owner has been outsourcing to Seattle and other areas.

Location: Fuego is located at 2611 Colby Ave #2921. This place has been there for a while and has quite a deep history. It was once known as the Doghouse, and then it became The Lucky Dog. It remained The Lucky Dog for a few years before the owner closed its door back in 2016. It would soon become Fuego, led by the new owners, Lisa and Rico Sanchez.

This place was always a dive bar due partly to its location. It’s smack dab in the middle of Colby Ave, between 26^th and Everett Ave. This is an area that all people could have fun because of its accessibility to the public. It’s right there on the main street of downtown Everett. A place where all could access, be it by foot, or bike (there are bike racks right by the bar) or by those driving in who wanted a quick brew before they headed back into the suburbs, where their homes were. The location is great, especially if you showed up after business hours, since there are other businesses in the area and the parking was much better at those time. But Fuego has a sort of dark personality to it, then and now.

Libations: The drinks at Fuego have always been lackluster. It’s a dive bar after all. But in recent times they’ve been expecting more money for less. A 22-Ounce beer of bud light will cost you about $7, which is more than going to Toggle’s for 22-ouncer that has more alcohol content. Fuego’s has pretty much what every other bar has, and some other stuff too, if you’re wiling to pay the price. From wine, to champagne, to some micro-brews, and the usual cheap stuff.

Food: I can’t even fill out a full subject on there food selection. Their food selection consists of fried packaged goods they bought at “Cash & Carry”. It’s pretty much the fried stuff you give to your children during the summertime when they are restless, and you don’t have time to make them a real meal. This has been the fact ever since they were the Doghouse.

Atmosphere: Weird. That’s all I can I say. At least when it was the Doghouse there were people that you could have a conversation with during the day. Same goes for when they were the Lucky Dog and the first iteration of Fuego. Now there is nothing there, but a dark room with some curtains and music and a staff that seem sketchy at best.

This place used to have a great atmosphere which I will talk about later, but for now, the place might as well be a grey, open warehouse where they service beer, without any charm. There is also a dance floor, which takes up most, if not all the space of the bar. I thin ka dance club in Everett would be great, if you have the space for it. Fuego’s doesn’t have the space to be a dance club though.

Service: The girl who owns the place now has no idea how to run a bar. She constantly runs around looking for the right bottle, or the right glass, or the right tap, or she’ll tell you she can’t serve what your asking for because she doesn’t know how.

Other than that, the service is still lack luster. I waited 10 minutes for the bartender to fill my glass, and the place was empty. She was running around, handling administration issues, and trying to fix the other bartenders’ issues. She is clearly more inept at bartending than she is at handling the administrative issues.

Let’s not get started on the “sometimes” bouncer Eddie. This guy is a moron who just does what he wants and kicks out people he doesn’t like. He has exhibited racist qualities, as well as anti-gay and anti-trans qualities as well. He is someone that no bar should ever consider if they see themselves as a safe place for everyone to drink and have fun.

Clientele: If you’re looking for the dregs of society during the day, then come here. If you’re looking for more respectable people than go to the Irishmen down the street. The people who used patronize the place are nonexistence, and if they are there, they are not the people you want to know. Wait until later in the evening and the crowd gets even worse.

The owner sees herself as a promoter, and she promotes the bar as a dance lounge to a certain type of clientele that subsists of folks from Seattle and Tacoma. They are not locals and they tend to cause more problems than they are worth. It’s more like a gang reunion than a bar you’d find in north Everett that patronizes its locals. In short, none of the locals go there anymore during the day.

The first night that Fuego opened under the new ownership was fraught with fights, and the local police had to come in and mediate. I say mediate because there were so many troublemakers that the police were outnumbered and had no choice but be mediators. In short, they were outnumbered by out of town folks who were causing trouble.

Price: Outrageous. A 22-ounce of Bud light was about $7. That should have been more like 5 dollars. Shots of whatever your pleasure were about $10-14. The food, which as I said above, is lackluster. Fried children’s food, or even worse. Steer clear of this mess, because all you are doing is paying $10 for a plate of microwaved or deep-fried food that you could have paid $1 for back at home.

Overall: Back when it was the Lucky Dog the establishment was a bastion for dart players, which would always find themselves in the semi or final rounds for semi-professional dart players of this region. They had a pretty good reputation, for a dive bar.

The bartenders were no-nonsense people, mostly ex-military, or folks who were pervious bartenders from other bars around Everett. But there was a shift in the guard after Rico and Lisa left. A new person came forth…one that saw herself as a promoter, and someone that would bring business in from other regions. And while she has fulfilled that business promise, she changed the bar into something that just doesn’t fit with the neighborhood. It was always a place that the cops would watch, but now it’s now become a place where the police actively watch over.

The new owners thought they were gentrifying the neighborhood, but they made it even worse than it was perceived before.

In summary, I would avoid this place at all costs. Let’s bring back the old Colby Ave we knew, the one that we could all enjoy, no matter who you were.