The Melting Pot

Location: The Melting Pot, Framingham, MA
Meal: Dinner, a celebration

For those of you who don't know, The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant, not a place where people of all ethnicities have settled in harmony. Everything on the menu, except the salad, is supposed to be dipped in a hot sauce, whether it's sweet or savory.

Because there were 5 of us, we decided to get two of the "Big Night Out" option. This option is designed to serve 2, and you get 2 salads, 1 cheese fondue, 1 meat selection (there are three options), and a dessert selection. I passed on the salad, since I'd had one for lunch, but rumor has it, they were delicious.

The cheese course was tasty. We got the cheddar and the santa fe cheeses. The neat thing about the Melting Pot is that the waitress creates all of the dips at the table. She brought grated cheese, added the beer base and the cheese to the pot, stirred it up until it was all melted, and then added flavors like garlic and jalapeno. The cheese pot was a hit with the whole table. We mostly ate the tortillas and bread that came with it. I was the first to have a bread castaway in the cheese, and it led to veggie and meat castaways in the following courses.

At this point, we were all pretty much full, but then the meat courses came out. We chose one with mushrooms, potatoes, chicken, steak and ravioli, and another with all that plus shellfish (shrimp and 2 lobster tails). The meat came out raw and we cooked it in pots of almost-boiling broth, flavored with burgundy wine. The broth was really good. The wine added a nice full flavor.

The table pretty much all agreed that the best part of the meat course was the beef rubbed with a portabello paste. The mushrooms and potatoes were also delicious. There was a sour cream based sauce that went very well with the mushrooms.

A couple of years ago, Buffalo Girl and I went to a fondue restaurant in Montreal. We'd never had fondue in a restaurant and did not know what to expect. At that place, the meat was shaved very thin, and it cooked in less than a minute. It was easy to tell when it was cooked. At the Melting Pot, the meat came in chunks, and it made me nervous. Undercooked chicken is not something I want to eat, but overcooked chicken is also unappetizing. It was hard to tell when the chicken was done and the lighting was dim so it wasn't necessarily possible by looking. A few times, the steak was left in for the suggested 3 minutes and came out pretty rare. Some people might like that. I don't love it.

Moving on to dessert. (full yet?! I was.) Plus, we'd already been at the restaurant for almost 2 hours and we were all getting kind of antsy.) We ordered 2 different chocolates, milk chocolate with peanut butter and oreo cookie (dark chocolate, my favorite). The dipping snacks were bite-size versions of cheesecake, brownies, strawberries, bananas, and some other things I can't remember now. All good, but a little sweet, and too much after the first 3 courses.

Prices are pretty high at this place. The Big Night Out ranges from $84 - $92 (approx) and that does not include drinks or choosing specialty broths. I think I would share one Big Night Out with 3 people, depending on how hungry we were. I would also like to go back for just apps and drinks. One note: Beer selection sucked. Pretty much your standard clear beers and Sam Adams.