Fun with Fondue: Dinner at the Melting Pot

A couple weeks ago, Win and I went to The Melting Pot for dinner. As I’ve mentioned before, I love The Melting Pot. It’s a terrific place to have a long, leisurely fondue experience.

Since I’ve written about The Melting Pot before, I’ll keep the descriptions of the dining experience there somewhat brief this time around.



We started with the Traditional Swiss Cheese Fondue, which is Gruyere and Emmenthaler Swiss chesses blended with white wine, garlic, fresh lemon, nutmeg and Kirschwasser. The cheese fondue is accompanied by an assortment of breads, vegetables and green apples to dip into the warm cheese. This is always my favorite course; I love their cheese fondue. It's heaven.

Next we had a California Salad. No photos of the salad because as tasty as it was, it was just a salad. Let’s move on to more fondue!



Next was the main event. We ordered the “Big Night Out.” This included lobster tails, filet mignon, pork tenderloin, salmon, shrimp and vegetables. We selected the Coq au Vin cooking style and dipped all this delicious meat and seafood into a broth of Burgundy wine, garlic, mushrooms, and other herbs and spices. This course was also accompanied by an array of dipping sauces to enhance the flavor of each bite.



Despite being pretty full, we did sample Melting Pot’s dessert fondue as well. We tried their Cookies ‘N Cream Marshmallow Dream, which was dark chocolate topped with marshmallow and then flambéed to toast the marshmallow. After the flambee step, the chocolate and marshmallow are swirled together and topped with crushed Oreo cookies. This decadent dessert fondue was served with all sorts of fresh fruit, cheesecake, brownies, and marshmallows. Yum---so, so good!





The Melting Pot is terrific and serves high quality food in a warm and relaxed atmosphere. My only issue with the Chicago location is that its servers still sound very scripted when presenting the menu options and explaining how the fondue process works. The staff comes off very professional and they clearly have memorized their lines, but if I had one piece of advice to share with them it would be to just loosen up a little and make the script you have memorized your own. Don't get me wrong---I'm absolutely in favor of being professional, polished, and able to recite everything on the menu and they do an excellent job with that. I'd just like to see some of the servers there be a bit less "robotic" when presenting the food. This restaurant has only been open for a few months though and I expect the waitstaff to loosen up a little, if Melting Pot corporate policy allows, with time and experience.

The Melting Pot is a wonderful place to go when you’re looking for a more “participative” dining experience. Delicious, delicious fondue from start to finish.

The Melting Pot
609 N. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60610
USA
Telephone: (312) 573-0011