Leave it to my kids to request the Melting Pot again for a birthday. This time it was my son, and after a couple of years, I felt like I was up for going back. The time before I was kind of put off with the whole, “nothing was that great and I had to cook everyone’s food even though we were at a restaurant” thing.
I was pleased to see they had changed up the combos on the menu a bit—at least in the cheese and chocolate areas (which as it t urns out are really the only reasons to be coming here). We ordered the Quattro formaggio cheese fondue, which well, obviously had four kinds of cheese (Butterkase, Fontina, mozzarella, and parmesan), as well as roasted garlic, white wine and basil and sun dried tomato pesto. It was really quite good. They give you bread to dip it in (my kids fought over the bits of pretzel bread) as well as raw veggies (not so much fighting here). This cheese had a lot of good flavor to it, much better than the sort of bland with a touch of nutmeg thing we had last time. I could easily just make a meal out of this.
When you get the whole meal deal, you get a salad course as well. Mine was the California, which had mixed greens, tomatoes, candied pecans and Gorgonzola cheese with a raspberry vinaigrette. Again, not bad. Much better than the house salad I think I had last time. My son’s a Caesar eater and seemed happy with it as well.
I’m not even going to get into the main course portion very much, other than my suggestion is to skip it. They bring you raw meat and seafood to cook at the table in hot broth. Much of the seafood tasted fishy to me and the sauces they give you with everything (a lot of sauces) all tend toward the sweet side. It’s really expensive ($40-50 per person for the four courses depending on what you get) to eat here I think considering you’re doing the cooking yourself. My advice: go and get the cheese and dessert and call it a day. They mix that part for you and all you have to do is dip your stuff into it. And it tastes good. The meat part, not so much.
Speaking of the dessert part, we had the chocolate s’mores with dark chocolate. It has marshmallows and graham cracker crumbs and is lit on fire at the table. You can’t really go wrong with chocolate fondue right? And then they give you cookie crumb coated marshmallows, pound cake, brownies, blondies, fruit, and rice crispy treats to dip in there. Yeah, it’s melted chocolate and it’s good. Like I said, go and get the cheese and the chocolate and you will have a lovely, tasty dinner for about $18 per person instead of $40-50.
The Melting Pot
5650 East 86th Street
Indy 46250
317/841-3601
The "cheese and chocolate only" strategy is what we've been doing here for years. Skip the meat and get what they do reasonably well. Still no real reason to go other than my daughter loves the place.
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