Pot o' melted bliss

Fondue rocks. The restaurant I went to last night was The Melting Pot (as Judy guessed!). It was my first time at a fondue restaurant of any kind, and I will definitely go back!

I went with a bunch of my co-workers for the restaurant's "Ladies' Night" package. It included a cheese course, a main course and a dessert course for $23. Not cheap, but very good. And instead of the main course, you can get a salad and that drops the price to $18. They also have a full bar and wine list. Here's how it works.

We had 8 adults and 2 kids (actually there were 7 adults and 3 kids, but one of the kids was 10 and ate what the adults ate, so she counts as an adult). So, we selected 4 fondue pots for each course. In that scenario, you can choose 4 different flavors for each pot, or all the same, or any combination therein.

For the cheese course, you have about 6-8 flavors to choose from. We did a traditional Swiss, a Caribbean, a cheddar and a spinach and artichoke. For dipping into the cheese pots, we were given bread (several different flavors cubed), veggies and apples. You could fill up on that alone, but we had 2 courses to go!

For the main course, you choose from 4 different cooking "styles" - essentially they're marinades or broths that boil at your table in the fondue pots, and you put items in the pots and cook them. You're also given 5 sauces to dip the cooked food in. We choose 2 different "styles" - a coq a vin and another herbed kind. And the items we were given to cook were beef, chicken, shrimp, raviolis, broccoli, squash and potatoes. The potatoes took way too long to cook, and we all pretty much gave up and just ate them crunchy (i.e. undercooked), which was lame. But everything else cooked really well and tasted great - especially with the sauces!

After that was the dessert course. There were 6-8 choices for dessert fondue - all chocolate based. We chose a chocolate with peanut butter; a turtle one, which had chocolate, caramel and pecans; a cookies and cream one; and a s'mores one. And to dip in the sauces, we were given plates with strawberries, pound cake, rice krispy treats, marshmallows covered in orea or graham cracker crumbs, graham crackers, and possibly a few other sweets I'm forgetting.

It was all very good, and it was a fun atmosphere - something I highly recommend for a celebration. But do plan to make an evening of it. It took us 3 hours to run through all 3 courses - an hour or more than I'd anticipated, and that was more time that I'd generally want to spend on a weeknight. But as a Friday or Saturday thing with a group, it's a great way to spend a fun evening. Not only do you all decide as a group what fondues to order, but if you get all different one, everyone is forced to get up and mingle to get to the various pots, so it makes for a very interactive atmosphere.

We had a great waiter who was very patient with us trying to figure out what we were doing. Thanks Austin (that's his name - I'm not thanking the city)! I'll be back with an even rowdier crowd in the future. :)