The Four-Hour Fondue Experience {The Melting Pot}

July 12, 2012


I was quite excited to learn that The Melting Pot is opening an location in the uptown area so close to where I live. I brought my family there on Father's day, thinking they would appreciate and enjoy some new dining experience. However, as soon as we started ordering our food, we realize it was not as glamourous as it might seem. As a family of four, we are quite different in taste so we were all going to order our own cheese fondue but disappointed to find out that we can only order ONE type to share among the four of us in the same little pot. The price on the menu, however is per person. We all feel that it is a bit of a ripped off that our own portion is now being split into 1/4 portion for the same price  (It's $46 per person or $92 per couple, I actually don't get why they put $92 per couple when it's not a deal to get a couple portion) Anyway, so at last, we settled on the Spinach Artichoke Cheese Fondue. For some reason, it took about 45 minutes to arrive. The good thing about this is though, you get to see how the fondue is being made, what kind of ingredients you put in. I was actually thinking to myself, maybe I can make this at home. 



{Spinach artichoke cheese fondue}
The fondue is pretty rich in taste and the spinach flavour actually blended perfectly with the Butterkase cheese. This appetizer comes with artisan bread, veggies and some apples. However, the fondue itself is definitely not enough to share for the four of us. We have leftover condiments and no cheese left.  Our server was quite understandable and gave us more cheese after I pointed out the price and portion per person argument. But it took another 45 minutes for our cheese refill to arrive. At this point, we knew this would be a long dinner... It was another 45 minutes or so for our main course to arrive. We seriously had no idea why the courses take this long to arrive when they don't even need to be cooked! It was a little bit past 10 for our Main course to arrive (the second being the salad) when our reservation was at 7:30 pm. Our server was entertaining most of the time to keep us from waiting our meal but that didn't really help kill time.

{Angus sirloin, BBQ pork tenderloin, white shrimp, chicken breast, teriyaki-marinated sirloin}
Our main courses, again were being shared on the same plate, even though we ordered an individual fondue feast. There were 3 entree cooking styles that we could choose from but still, we are only allowed to pick ONE. So we ordered the Burgundy wine cooking style. The taste of our feast was alright, nothing memorable and worth noting. The only part I like about the main course is the different sauce they provide for the different meat. Without that, I don't think there was any flavour to the meat. My dad actually thinks that he rather have Chinese Hot Pot All You Can Eat for half the price less because it definitely reminds him of it. But then, it's for the experience, right? I tried convincing myself and my family but the wait for our food was just too long... I don't know why we are paying this value for a waiting experience. This time though, we asked our server to get our last course ready as we were rushing to get our main course finish so we can hurry up and finish up with the dessert and go home.
At 11-ish, our Chocolate fondue arrived. We ordered the Yin & Yang fondue which is half dark and half white chocolate. The condiments for the dessert include fresh strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, pineapples, marshmallows, pound cake and brownies. The white chocolate is a bit too sweet but it compliments well with the dark chocolate; way better than the fondue I tried at Moroco, if I need to compare... So our whole Melting Pot experience lasted 4 hours and it was the longest dinner we have had. My mom even claimed that it was even longer than having a dinner at a wedding banquet! It's true.


{Yin & Yang chocolate fondue}
The verdict? I will probably come back for the dessert only, the selections on the dessert menu are really worth anticipating, but the food and the whole experience probably not worth so much. In the end, we all agreed that this is more a couple kind of dining place than a family get-together type of dining. My word of advice is that if you have 4 or more people going, I strongly recommend you to sit separately into twos. After all, you are paying for the same and you are using the exact same pot as if you all sit together.


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About Me


About [span]me[/span]
Hello, I'm Lorita. Hoping to inspire you to explore and create things that make life a bit more fun and beautiful.


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