The Melting Pot

My sister was in town a couple of weeks ago and really wanted to go to the Melting Pot. For some reason I obliged.

The restaurant itself is fairly pleasant looking - large tables and fairly plain, cookie cutter decor. That's probably where my excitement about this restaurant ends. We start off by waiting about 10 minutes for the Host to find our reservation and get his act together -- this despite the place being empty and our telling him that we were in a rush.

Finally we sit, and the waitress gives us menus and takes our drink order...and forgets my drink. I'll chalk this one up to ineptitude. We pick our choices and the food comes out.

The first course is the cheese course. We order traditional Swiss fondue and a dish called "Wisconsin Fondue:" a mix of cheddar, blue, and fontina cheeses. Now I don't know if this is a requirement for fondue, but the bread that came out was stale. Other than that, this was a decent course -- i mean, you can't go wrong with cheese.

Then the main course comes out. We ordered a vegetarian plate, a fish plate, and a beef plate (there were five of us in all), and ordered both oil and broth as our cooking media. They bring out a number of batters and sauces and show us what to do. I try battering some meat. The batter (of course) won't stay on the meat. I stick the half-battered piece of steak into the fryer and overcook it. Even overcooked, the batter doesn't cook properly (the oil isn't hot enough). So I wind up with some nasty excuse for tempura beef. The salmon, veggies, etc. aren't much better. The nice thing is that it's hard to really truly overcook food in fondue -- it's probably going to stay moist. In few words: this became a meal of sauces, as they were the only way to mask my distaste for basically everything else.

All in all, my take is that this is a gimmicky chain with mediocre food. See, I did promise you some bad reviews...