Fondues and Don’ts

Yesterday (Sunday) was my 12th wedding anniversary. Saturday evening, Susan and I got a night away from the kids and had dinner at The Melting Pot down in Bricktown.

Dinner in Bricktown starts with parking in Bricktown. I use a fairly unoriginal technique — go to the final destination and then spiral outward, parking in the first parking lot that isn’t full. Saturday night that ended up being about two blocks away from the restaurant. It was raining hard enough that Susan brought and used an umbrella. I didn’t. I don’t do umbrellas.

We arrived at The Melting Pot at 7:50pm with reservations for 8pm. Apparently the food isn’t the only thing that melts at The Melting Pot. We were told that the restaurant was running fifteen minutes behind, but fifteen minutes turned out to be over an hour. What really pissed us off was that walk-ins were being seated before we were. Susan really wanted to eat at this place for our anniversary; otherwise, I would have walked out (and not quietly). After an hour and thirteen minutes of waiting, we were seated at 9:03pm. It took me a few minutes to get out of my grumpy mood, but a Paradise Punch (which comes with Bacardi light rum, Myers’s dark rum, Captain Morgan spiced rum and Malibu rum) took the edge off my crankiness.

The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant, and their specialty, the “Big Night Out,” contains four courses.

The first course is a cheese fondue. There are half a dozen or so to choose from, and we picked a spicy Mexican cheese. Each table has a hot plate built in. The waiter came to our table and made our cheese fondue right in front of us. Once it was melted, he brought out things to dip into the cheese: chips, bread, carrots, celery, and green apples.

The second course is a salad. There were again about half a dozen salads to pick from. I’m not sure what one can say about a salad. It was saladicious?

The third course is the featured entree. There are three different feasts to choose from; we chose the Fondue Feast, which contains filet mingon, marinated sirloin, garlic chicken, pork tenderloin, white shrimp, ravioli, rigatoni, and vegetables. The cheese fondue pot was removed and a new pot was brought. We had to choose a cooking style: we picked “mojo style” (which is pronounced “moho” but we insisted our waiter refer to it as “mojo,” because that was much funnier). Once the mojo was steaming the meat and vegetable plates were brought out and we spent our time using skewers and cooking the meats (which were cut into small pieces), one bite-size chunk at a time. We were also served eight or nine different dipping sauces. I can’t remember each of them but there was a cocktail sauce for the shrimp, something that resembled Chinese duck sauce, a bleu cheese sauce, and several others. Even though the meat and vegetable place seemed small, we were STUFFED and could not finish everything — and, dessert was still to come!

The fourth and final course was a chocolate fondue pot. There were eight different mixes to choose from but we stuck with the original, which contained chocolate, crunchy peanut butter, and a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Our dessert plate contained bananas, marshmallows, strawberries, cookies, cake, bread, and cheesecake. We were so full at this point that we had to pick and choose what we were going to eat. I stuck to the bananas and marshmallows, which were absolutely delicious when dipped in the chocolate sauce. Then again, a shoe wouldn’t have been half bad either.

The entire Big Night Out dinner for two people is $79. One year for our anniversary Sue and I ate at Nix (the rotating restaurant) and we paid around $100 for two 5oz steaks, salads, and iced tea. Compared to that this was really worth the money. I was still stuffed the following morning. For those who don’t want all four courses, you can skip straight to the chocolate for only $14.95.