Specialty restaurants are where we go to for special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays, work promotions, and other events that call for more than just burgers, fried chicken, and ice cream. While there aren’t many specialty restaurants that live up to their names, there are two who do.
The Melting Pot is more than a restaurant, it’s a dining experience by itself. Various kinds of cheeses and meat and seafood entrées are served with different kinds of broth, oil or dipping sauces. There are also several chocolate fondues for those who prefer to go all-out for a fun dessert among family and friends.
The Cheese Fondue
Four courses – cheese fondue, salad, chocolate fondue, and an entrée – are featured individually in the complete meal at The Melting Pot, but these can also be ordered as their “Four Course Experience.” Their main entrées are, of course, fondues, albeit they include traditional meat, pasta, seafood or poultry as well.
The typical Cheese Fondue comes complete with seasonal vegetables and artisan bread for dipping. Cheese choices include:
- Classic Alpine: Fontina, Raclette, and aged Gruyère are deliciously blended together with fresh garlic and white wine and sprinkled with some nutmeg.
- Spinach Artichoke: Butterkäse and Fontina cheeses, artichoke hearts, garlic, and spinach are mixed to perfection to make this fondue stand out with a distinctive taste.
- Cheddar: Emmenthal Swiss and medium-sharp aged Cheddar cheeses are combined with seasonings, garlic, and lager beer to come up with this delightful concoction.
Premium Cheese Fondue Dippers are a selection of fresh and succulent Italian meats from the best artisans that go very well with any cheese fondue that you choose. You will have to ask your server for what is available, however, since the availability of these meats may vary from one location to another.
The Chocolate Fondue
This usually caps a meal at The Melting Pot, but don’t let convention stop you from making it the first and only course. Although menus for the Chocolate Fondue may vary by restaurant location, you can always find the nearest location from the official website.
The typical Chocolate Fondue includes pineapple, pound cake, bananas, strawberries, marshmallows, brownies, and blondies. The Melting Pot’s Original Milk Chocolate Fondue has swirls of crunchy peanut butter. For the chocolate purist, The Melting Pot offers a choice of dark, white or milk chocolate for melting scrumptiously.
Creating Your Own Fondue
For the adventurer in you, The Melting Pot offers you to create your own fondue with a selection of dark, white or milk chocolate and adding a choice of Chambord®, Disaronno®, Tuaca®, Cointreau®, Grand Marnier® or Baileys®.
Experience what The Melting Pot calls the Flaming Turtle fondue candy, a totally irresistible blend of caramel, candied pecans, and milk chocolate flambéed to perfection at your tableside.
White and dark chocolate for a delectable preparation that balances sweet and bitter, respectively in The Melted Pot’s Yin and Yang specialty fondue.
Bring back childhood memories with the Chocolate S’mores fondue and savor milk chocolate and marshmallow cream topped with graham cracker bits flambéed at your tableside.
Experience French Cuisine at Mimi’s Café
If fondue is not your thing but you still want a unique dining experience, go French and go Mimi’s Café. For breakfast, lunch or dinner, Mimi’s Café offers authentic French cuisine, even for the kids. Take a look at some of the breakfast items and find yourself saying “ooh la la”:
Omelets
Bacon Avocado: this omelet has spinach, tomatoes, avocado, hickory-smoked bacon, and Jack cheese with muffin or toast served with roasted savory-basil-thyme potatoes.
Egg White & Veggie: egg white, mushrooms, tomatoes, caramelized onions, spinach, and goat cheese go into this open-faced omelet served with fresh fruit.
Hickory-Smoked Ham & Cheese: cheddar, hickory-smoked ham, green and red bell peppers, and caramelized onions are in this omelet served with muffin or toast and basil-savory-thyme roasted potatoes.
Andouille Sausage & Red Pepper: French sausage, red pepper tomato sauce, mushrooms, caramelized onions, and Jack cheese omelet served with muffin or toast and basil-savory-thyme roasted potatoes.
Quiches and Crepes
Quiche Lorraine: classically French with Swiss cheese, green onions, and hickory-smoked bacon served with fresh fruit. Egg, Spinach & Cheese Crêpes: savor this crêpe of Mornay cheese sauce drizzled-onions, spinach, and tomatoes served with fruit.
Have Lunch Like the French
You don’t have to fly across the Atlantic to have a French lunch because you can have it at Mimi’s Café. Start off with a choice of appetizers such as Baked Brie, Warm Spinach-Artichoke Dip or Deviled Eggs before a Bleu Cheese & Bacon Salad. Then savor any of several entrées (only three of which are listed here):
- Steak Frites: 10 ounces of New York strip steak, aged for 28 days, served with in-house garlic-thyme butter and hand-cut potatoes which the French call “frites,” seasoned in classic Gallic style.
Beef Bourguignon: braised beef slow-cooked with carrots, pearl onions, and mushrooms in shallot-red wine sauce served over French mashed potatoes.
Pork Cassoulet: with a crust of Parmesan, white beans, spinach, and Andouille sausage that has been slow-cooked are all baked together and served with the house salad.
Dîner Français
Have dinner at Mimi’s Café, French style. Try the Grand-Mère’s Chicken, a take on the classic Coq Au Vin of braised chicken in mushrooms, pearl onions, and red wine served with mashed potatoes. Or have the Roasted Chicken Crêpes filled with slow-roasted chicken, sautéed mushrooms and spinach topped with cherry tomatoes and Dijon mustard-Chardonnay sauce.
And what’s a French dinner with the iconic Crème Brûlée in the form of a cheesecake? Yes, a croissant is a delight by itself, but at Mimi’s Café, it has become a sinfully scrumptious triple delight of almond-chocolate-butter flaky pastry served with whipped cream and salted caramel. And to complement that heavenly-tasting cuisine, have your pick of a Mimosa:
- Triple Berry: fresh-squeezed orange juice, strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry with Korbel California champagne.
- White Peach: Korbel California champagne infused with Bellini’s White Peach flavor and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
- Mimi-Mosa: a burst of Tangerine in a blend of fresh-squeezed orange juice and Korbel California champagne.
