Awesome Dining Experience -- The Melting Pot Restaurant
Written: May 09 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: awesome experience
Cons: a bit pricey
|
|
|
| poseidon's Full Review: Melting Pot |
There’s this little restaurant located about two miles from my house. I drive by it almost every evening, and the parking lot is always packed solid. I knew it was part of a national chain, but couldn’t figure out for the life of me why it would be so full every single night. Even when I drove by at about midnight, the lot was still full.
My parents have always had a tradition of taking their children out to any restaurant of our choosing on our birthdays. Naturally I remembered this restaurant, and told my folks that I had no idea what it was about, but needed to visit it because that many people just can’t be wrong.
My parents made a reservation for my birthday, which fell on Easter this year. I was all excited, and then my usual bad luck hit me – I got called out of town on a business venture out of state. I tried to convince my boss to send someone else instead, but he told me that I had weaseled out of storm duty long enough, and there would be no more excuses.
As soon as I knew when I would be home, my parents made another reservation, and we managed to finally get a time this past Sunday evening.
All I can say is – WOW!
The Melting Pot is a very unique restaurant. I can’t remember ever visiting a restaurant whose claim to fame is fondue.
Even the building was unique. It used to be the old Littleton Public Library, and had been converted to a restaurant. All three floors, including the basement, were being used as dining space. The original brick walls were still in place, and the restaurant was decorated pleasantly.
The basic menu consists of four courses – appetizer, salad, entrée and dessert.
The appetizer is a cheese fondue. You are presented with four absolutely delicious choices. The choices are a Cheddar Cheese fondue, two Swiss Cheese fondues, and a spicy Fiesta Cheddar Cheese fondue. Since I am not a big fan of spicy foods, we settled on the Cheddar Cheese fondue.
They made the Cheddar cheese sauce right on our table. They started off with a lager beer base, then poured some garlic in it, some black pepper, and then dumped in gobfulls of Cheddar and Emmenthaler Swiss cheeses, and then mixed them together.
To dip in the cheese sauce, we had white, rye and pumpernickel bread chunks, sliced apples, carrots, cauliflower and some other assorted vegetables. This was absolutely divine!
The next course was the salad. I am not a fan of salads at all, but was willing to try one. The choices consisted of a Mushroom salad, a Chef’s salad, or a California salad. My parents and my sister chose the California salad, and I went ahead and chose the Mushroom salad.
My Mushroom salad came with about 98% thinly sliced button mushrooms and 2% spinach lettuce. That was fine, I munched happily on the mushrooms and left the spinach lettuce alone. We all came to the same conclusions about our salads – the dressings were way too heavy and strong.
I would recommend asking for your salad dressing on the side.
Next came the main entrée. There are two ways to place this order. You can either order for two people, or you can order a single entrée at the bottom of the menu. The upside to ordering off the two-person menu is the price includes the appetizer and salad as well. If you order off the bottom of the menu, everything is a la carte.
We opted for the group menu. In this section, you are given the choice of three meals.
The Classic consists of Choice tenderloin, shrimp, teriyaki sirloin, boneless breast of chicken and fresh salmon. The sauces served with this dish are Spicy Cocktail, Mesquite Barbecue, Teriyaki Glaze, and Ginger Plum. The price for two people is $43.90.
The Surf & Turf consists of twin lobster tails, tender medallions of center cut Filet Mignon and Portobello mushrooms. The sauces are Garlic Dijon Butter, Gorgonzola Port, Basil pesto, Sherried Au Poivre. The price for two people depends on whatever the current market price is for lobster.
The third choice is The Pacific Rim. All of us opted for this platter. It consisted of Teriyaki marinated choice sirloin, shrimp, peppered pork tenderloin, marinated breast of duck, boneless breast of chicken, and potstickers. The sauces were Thai Peanut, Teriyaki Glaze, Ginger Plum. It was priced at $46.90 for two people.
At this point I ran into a bit of a problem. I explained to the waitress that I was severely allergic to shrimp – so much so that if the shrimp were even cooked in the same pot as anything else, then I would still have the same allergic reaction. She was kind enough to offer a substitute on both plates, and gave us a choice of a wide-range of items. The one that caught my fancy was scallops. My sister agreed and my parents opted for another portion of the salmon.
We had to choose between three types of base to cook our food. There is the broth, an oil base, and the Coq Au Vin, which was a mixture of broth and wine. We opted for the third choice. This choice did carry an extra $6.00 charge.
The platters included unlimited amounts of vegetables, which were broccoli, sliced potatoes, mushroom and squash.
The entrée was fantastic – absolutely fantastic. It took about two minutes to cook each item in the broth, and there was no danger of overcooking. This was the advantage of the broth over the oil. The waitress warned us that the oil required more attention to cooking because it was possible to overcook and burn the food.
Finally, it was time for dessert. There are two sizes of desserts – a small and a large (aptly named). The small feeds two people and the large feeds four. We were not very hungry, so we opted for a small to feed the four of us, and in all honesty it was very sufficient. The small cost $9.99 and the large cost $19.95.
The dessert menu reads as follows:
The Original
This original recipe features milk chocolate with a hint of nuts.
Amaretto Meltdown
Silky white chocolate swirled with Amaretto and flambeed tableside.
Cookies 'n Cream Marshmallow Dream
Dark chocolate topped with marshmallow cream, flambeed to toast the marshmallow, swirled together and garnished with crushed Oreo cookies.
Yin and Yang
Half dark chocolate and half white chocolate, artfully swirled in the same pot for that special mix of flavors.
Bailey's Irish Cream Dream
Our milk chocolate swirled with Bailey's Irish Cream.
Flaming Turtle
Milk chocolate, caramel and chopped pecans, flambeed tableside.
Chocolate S'mores
Milk chocolate fondue topped with marshmallow cream, flambeed to toast the marshmallow and then garnished with crushed Graham crackers. Also includes Graham crackers for dipping.
Pure Chocolate
Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or white chocolate, melted for the most pure of all chocolate fondues.
Special Event
Create your own masterpiece. Select from dark, white, or milk chocolate and your favorite liqueur and topping for your own signature creation.
All the dessert sauces were served with cheesecake slices, brownies, pound cake, bananas, marshmallows, pineapple and strawberries. We opted for the Flaming Turtle.
All four of us thought we died and had gone to heaven. We were fighting over the last few drops of the sauce after we had finished everything we could dip in them. Even though I’m not a fan of strawberries, the chocolate/caramel sauce made the strawberries mouthwatering!
The menu did sport an impressive wine list, according to my father. None of us, however, were up for any wine during our meal, and only my dad had something other than water to drink. He had two glasses of Coors, which seemed like they were served in half-yard glasses.
We left the restaurant very full, very happy, and agreed it was a very unique and fun experience.
There are various locations around the country, including two in Colorado. The Littleton Melting Pot is located at 2707 W. Main Street. Their telephone number for reservations is 303-794-5666. The Louisville Melting Pot is located at 732 Main Street, and their telephone number is 303-666-7777.
Although The Melting Pot is a bit on the pricey side, I would definitely recommend making a reservation and visiting. You won’t have a single regret.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
poseidon
|
 - Top 200 |
|
Member: Jeffrey Schwartz
Location: Sunrise, FL, USA
Reviews written: 512
Trusted by: 1096 members
About Me:
Feel free to contact with me... my Facebook account is located at http://profile.to/jeffschwartz/
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.