Jessica G.
Yelp
Blame the Man vs Food guy - we never would have come here had I not happened to be watching the show where he is in Springfield, trying out local places. Normally, we stick to a few other spots.
Anyway, so I watched that Man vs Food show and saw that there was a challenge with the Firebrand chili - finish a bowl and get your name on the wall, with an additional star for each additional bowl you can finish. No time limit, just finish your bowl. I like me some spicy food so I wanted to give it a try.
The woman at the counter who took my order thought I was crazy - not sure why but she was all smirky and I figured it would be worthwhile to take my empty bowl up to her. I don't think she thought I was going to finish it!
I'm not sure why but I guess I thought the Firebrand would be hotter. It is entirely possible that the fact that I had a cold at the time caused me to miss out on some of the hotness of the chili but aside from some mildly numb lips and a slight tingle to the tongue, I didn't feel like I was going to shoot out of my seat with my jeans on fire, hence 4 starts instead of 5. It is very tasty, though, I will give that.
Now, the texture is very meaty, light on beans and extremely, for lack of a better word, juicy. I read that this is the suet that the meat, etc are cooked in - be prepared for a lot of this and also you will probably want some (and by some I mean a lot of) oyster crackers to soak up the liquid - your bowl will be hard to get to the state of empty otherwise. You can order your chili to your own specifications, though, to have more or less of each item, which is nice.
Other folks I was with had the hot dog and they also have a loose meat "burger" which, according to the husband person, was pretty tasty. The menu is not huge overall, but it's a chili place, so there's, you know, stuff to go along with chili. It works.
It's cash only, and a bit of a dive, but it's worth visiting for lunch - they are only open a few hours each day and closed on Sunday.