We spent our 15th Anniversary weekend at our favorite Embassy Suites Hotel. It's a beautiful place (I'll post a couple of photos--I promise) and it was just what we needed. We also went to The Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. We'd never been, but we had a gift card from Christmas of 2005, so we thought we'd finally use it!
If you've never been to
The Melting Pot, it is the
perfect place for a romantic occasion. (When I made the reservation she asked me if we were celebrating anything and I told her it was our 15th anniversary.)
The booths are all really private, with tall walls that wrap around and dim lighting and candles. They put us in the very back and covered the table with rose petals and laid a very large, perfect red rose across it. They even had a card propped up against the pretty, crystal candleholder. It was so beautiful. I felt really special. My only regret is that I couldn’t fit my camera in my tiny dress purse.
The four courses took 2 1/2 hours and, since the only reservation we could get was 10 PM (make your reservations early!), we didn’t get out of there until after 12:30! At least my huge diet splurge spanned 2 days. ;)
We loved it. We both have no idea how anyone could eat that kind of thing regularly, but we loved it. If we ever go back, we already know that eating less cheese fondue (course 1) is key, but it was so damn good. We didn’t have room for course 4 (the chocolate course) but, since I got a coupon for free choc fondue when I signed up for their online club (do this before you go if you ever do) it was free and we were there so we ordered it anyway. It was really good.
Here’s what we ordered:
Course 1- Fontina and Butterkase cheeses w/artichoke hearts, garlic & spinach (They give you breads, tortilla chips, veggies and green apples for dipping)
Course 2- He: house salad (lettuce, eggs, tomatoes, cheese, balsamic vinegar dressing) She: CA salad (lettuce, spinach, blue cheese, walnuts, tomatoes, raspberry dressing) I added some of the green apples from the first course to my salad because that’s how I roll. I also saved some to dip in the chocolate because I don’t like to waste things. They take everything away fter each course unless you ask to keep it. All the dippers are bottomless, BTW. Except, I’m pretty sure, the ones with the choc course.
Course 3- The Signature Selection: A combo of chicken breast, salmon, shrimp, teriyaki marinated serloin, and fillet minon cooked in vegetable broth. There are 4 choices of cooking broths, 2 of which cost extra. (Yes, you do cook the meat yourself, but it’s easy. The small pieces take only 90 seconds for fish to 2 minutes for meat) They also give you mushrooms, potatoes, yellow squash and broccoli to cook.
Course 4- Plain* milk chocolate (they give you a little cheesecake slice, strawberry & banana slices, a couple of brownie cubes and a couple of marshmellows coated in oreo crumbs and a couple of marshmellows coated in some white crumbs as well as long thin slices of rice crispy treat for dipping.)
I thought the chocolate course was a little chinsy and I would have liked more dippers if I wasn’t as full as I was. The chocolate got too hot after a few minutes and the rice crispy treats actually disintegrated, but overall, everything was really good. (*Please note: it is very unlike me to choose plain anything (there were many choices), but we were full. When I looked at the menu again later I saw that we could have added Cointrau, Grand Marnier, Chambord–-be still my heart!-–or Tuaca to the chocolate if we wanted to, and I would have done so if I’d seen it earlier.)
And I mentioned the pretty table, right? Because it cannot be mentioned enough times. It was so pretty. My colors too, black and grey marble with the contrast of those red rose petals and all the candlelight. The booth fabric was black with a print of those 50’s-style stick stars in charcoal grey. (I told Abner I wanted a sofa made out of it.) I loved it. I would recommend THe Melting Pot to anyone who wants to do something special and different. I would def recommend it to girlfriends. It would be a fun girls night out. I’d totally skip the meat course and ask for more chocolate dippers.
All in all it was the perfect weekend. And it's still going on cuz we both took Monday off. :)
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