While it’s customary for me to drag along companions for my weekly reviews, today will be different. My colleagues at The Lantern called and cancelled five minutes after our table was ready – citing some lame excuse like “election coverage.” As if our campus community cares more about USG than it does about fondue. It’s preposterous!
But what was I to do? Abandon you, loyal readers, to discover the cheesy elegance of fondue for yourselves? You know tha H-Dawg won’t play you like that. Nay, instead – like the sad, abandoned bachelor I was – I got a table for one and ordered for two.
The Melting Pot, located at 5090 N. High St., is honestly one of the classiest places I’ve been lately. The cuisine is breathtaking in its appeal and variety; the atmosphere is comfortable and intimate; and the service is extraordinarily kind and attentive. Though priced comparably to its smoking brethren, The Melting Pot is expensive enough to deter all but starry-eyed couples looking to spend a special $70 evening together or calculating Casanovas looking to arrange “the sure thing.”
The menu consists mainly of luxurious fondue recipes that are combined and heated on your table. My four-course extravaganza started with a traditional Swiss cheese fondue. It was prepared with Gruyere and Emmenthaler Swiss cheeses, white wine, a pinch of garlic, nutmeg, fresh lemon and kirshwasser liquor. Into this smooth, sumptuous concoction I dipped a prepared array of fresh apples, breads and vegetables. It was magnificent, truly the most memorable part of my evening. Greedy individuals should be warned; the cheese at the bottom of the bowl is so hot it’s smoking.
The pot, for reasons not terribly lucid to me, is warmed on a stove, which in turn heats most of the metal extending across the table. It seems reasonable to think a safer setup would be easily implemented, though I suppose most guests won’t burn themselves more than once.
The second course was my California Salad. Though thankfully free of those infamous raisins, this salad still had froufrou coming out of its proverbial buttocks. It’s described in the menu as “mixed baby greens, roma tomatoes, walnuts and Gorgonzola cheese, topped with homemade Raspberry Black Walnut Vinaigrette dressing.”
Now I don’t want to come across as anti-Balsamic, but I thought the dressing made the salad a little too oily. The salad was too tender to fork easily, and I eventually gave up the fight – leaving the last few babies green to float alone in the oily residue of their departed brothers.
The main course was a series of meat, seafood and vegetable items to be cooked myself in The Melting Pot’s homemade seasoned vegetable broth. At my leisure, I heated and sampled small pieces of teriyaki sirloin, fillet mignon, chicken breast, shrimp, scallops and mushrooms. No less than seven different sauces accompanied these items, each corresponding to a different food.
While it was sometimes taxing to keep track of how long I had heated certain items and ended up accidentally eating a half-cooked piece of chicken, I think with two heads keeping track of the pot, the cooking might have proceeded without incident. Remarkably, even my own bungled efforts produced very delicious, satisfying cuisine.
For dessert, I ordered a milk chocolate fondue topped with marshmallow cream, then flambéed and garnished with crushed graham crackers. I poured this marvelous mixture over an impressive array of strawberries, bananas, pineapple, marshmallows, pound cake, fudge brownies and cheesecake. It was as fantabulous as it sounds.
Something to remember is that this gluttony takes over two hours to finish. The Melting Pot is by no means a simple dining diversion before a show: It is the show. I heartily recommend it to anyone bored with his or her standard weekend routine of riotous police confrontation and drunken self-exposure.
Hank Mylander is a graduating senior in management information systems. He reminds his readers to keep safe this weekend and remember their gas masks. Even decent people like you can get hurt when drunken idiots attack armed idiots. The Masticator can be reached for comment and criticism at [email protected].
