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| - I'm not a Cleveland Yelper, I come from the San Francisco Bay Area, so maybe my tastes are not quite picky enough.
The Wife and I were in the Land of Cleve for Thanksgiving and we had an evening when The Girls were to be watched by the Grandma. I turned to Yelp for restaurants not too far away from where we were, and in spite of the mixed reviews, I am quite fond of fondue and thought I would give it a shot. I made reservations and our table was ready when we arrived.
I would say that I had every 'negative' experience noted in the negative reviews (we had one of the isolated tables where it's a little bit of a reach to dip your food, the server I think was the one that others had stated 'she didn't care'), and I'm going to disagree with the negatives.
The Melting Pot is a low-light place with a full bar and hot plates on every table. Our server (who was very polite and efficient although not exactly effusive) took our drink orders and returned with the fondue pots and explained the menus. We settled on a four-course meal (cheese fondue, boullion, chocolate) and it was a lot of fun with the waitress preparing the cheese fondue at table.
A decent selection of wine was offered and we enjoyed the cheese immensely with bread, fruit and vegetables. I would note that someone had said the cheese was cold...well that's because you need to let it warm up.
And that's one of the expectations that must be managed; this is not a short meal; plan for at least an hour and a half, but more likely two hours. Fondue takes time to heat up and you have to use boiling water or it will burn. So if the waitress takes a little time between orders, it's because she's servicing other diners.
The entrees were excellent, I had the lobster, chicken, and steak cooked in the bouillon, as did The Wife. The waitress gave us good cooking instructions and we enjoyed cooking each other's skewers.
The chocolate was almost too much. It's a filling meal, think about it, you eat a quarter pound of cheese, bunch of surf and turf, and then you're pounding down fruit and strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce, and we were stuffed. To alleviate the pain, we capped off the night with an Irish coffee.
They also set us up well for our anniversary, chocolate covered strawberries and a card, which was a nice touch.
So was it a five star experience? Just a little shy, above four stars but not quite four and a half. But unless everyone in Cleveland dines at Michelin star restaurants daily, I'm going to go on a limb and suggest that this place is underrated.
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