Restaurant Review- The Melting Pot

My boyfriend and I have been wanting to go try The Melting Pot for some time now.   It’s a little pricey so we had put it off…we finally got a chance to visit a few weekends ago.

When we first sat down, the waiter explained to us how you order a four- course meal starting with a cheese fondue, a salad, an entree, and then finishing off with the chocolate fondue.   For our cheese course, we picked the Fiesta Cheese Fondue.  This was a mix of   cheddar, salsa, and jalapenos melted together.  It was served with bread dippers, apples, tortilla chips, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower.  It was really good and oddly our favorite combination (besides the tortilla chips, which are the obvious choice)  were the apples.  Mmmm cheese, salsa and apples.

Next was the salad course,   which we ordered off the “Big Night Out” menu.    It was a lettuce wrap that was filled with vegetables and you dipped it into a dressing.  It was also delicious and an interesting take on a salad.

For our Entree we ordered the Fondue Fusion from the “Big Night Out” menu.   This included lobster tail, ahi tuna, sirloin, pork tenderloin, chicken, shrimp, dumplings, and vegetables.  The entree comes to your table uncooked and you have to cook it yourself in a broth.    This sounds fun and interesting…I know I fell for it too.   You cook your meat and vegetables in your broth for about 3-4 minutes and can dip it in one of the many dipping sauces they give you.   At first it was fun and entertaining,  then after a bit, it gets old and you sort of gross yourself out handling the raw meats.

Once you are done,  they clean up your area and the chocolate comes!   This was our favorite part!  We ordered “The Original”  which was milk chocolate and peanut butter.  For dipping you get pound cake, rice krispie treats, brownies,  strawberries, bananas, cheese cake, and Oreo crumb covered marshmallows and graham cracker crumb marshmallows.   Let me tell…you dipping the crumb-covered marshmallows was the best part- my boyfriend actually told me that he has never seen me so happy before (haha!)

So, overall it was a fun experience and luckily we found a coupon for free dessert which got us $20 off our bill.   I feel like I could have made both the cheese and the chocolate at home for a lot cheaper.   The entree actually made us both a little sick later on.   I am glad we finally went, but probably will not be going back anytime soon (lesson learned!)  I will be making my own fondues in the future and I will definitely be serving them with the Oreo and graham cracker-covered marshmallows (I asked the waiter how to make them!)  If you decide to try this place out,  I recommend just getting the cheese and the chocolate and skipping the entree.

-K

First Ski Day of the Season

Husband M and I finally got in our first day of downhill skiing in for the season (we went cross-country skiing with the family in upstate NY over Christmas).  We decided to check out Ragged Mountain up in New Hampshire.  Since it was a holiday weekend, we expected a certain amount of lines and crowds.  And, since the snow has decided to hit up places like Washington, D.C. lately (as opposed to up further north) we were not expecting stellar skiing conditions.  We were pleasantly surprised to find very short lift lines and pretty great East-coast conditions.  The only patches of ice I encountered all day were a few skied- off black diamonds trails near the very top of the mountain.  The rest of the mountain had some great wide-open cruisers with hardly anyone on them.  It was a great day of skiing and we got a lot of great runs in.

Afterwards, we apres-skied at a bar called the Flying Goose pub.  As you can imagine, lot of stuffed flying geese everywhere.  There was also a very large stuffed moose, bore, deer, and a clock that told time backwards (with the 11 where the 1 is, the 10 where the 2 is, etc.)  I imagine that gets people out of there before they have had too many drinks…it kind of blew my mind trying to read the time cold sober.

We then hit up a restaurant in Concord, NH called The Common Man, which is apparently a large chain up in the Granite State.  Initially, we were given a one hour waiting time, which was pretty unbelievable since we showed up there at 5:15.  Try going into a restaurant anywhere in Boston in 5:15…it would be completely empty!  We ended up having to wait two hours overall for our table.   Fortunately, there was a pretty nice lounge/bar area to wait in and we secured a nice sitting area to wait it out in.  They also had complimentary dip, cheese, and crackers to snack on as well.  Once we sat down though, the place seemed to have really cleared out and there were a lot of empty tables…either people got scared away by the wait time or everyone just likes to eat really early in NH.  Our food was a little slow to arrive, but overall pretty good.  I got the Caesar Salad and Baked Stuffed Shrimp.  The husband order the Caesar as well, and the filet mignon covered with shrimp scampi  (per our waiter’s recommendation).  Our friend B was devastated to hear they were out of her personal favorite, the prime rib.  Our waiter came back a few minutes later and had just found two more servings of the prime rib out of the blue…not sure where he suddenly found them, but she was elated to have her dish of choice back!

We then headed back to Boston…the ride was only about an hour and went by quickly with DJ Husband M controlling the dial (with my cries of , “Hey! I’m the driver…put that Miley Cyrus song back on!” every other song or so.)  We also successfully score a parking spot right away as well.  Overall, it was a great winter day.