The Melting Pot (Edmonton)

I need to make a confession… I am a cheese-a-holic. I love cheese, I love all cheese (well… except blue cheese and even then I keep trying it hoping that my tastes have changed). I was once asked in a session, “What can you not live without?” and amidst electricity and water, I found myself listing cheese.So with that in mind, there isn’t much that can top a warm bubbly pot of cheese with lots of things to dip into it.

Spinach & Artichoke Fondue (The Melting Pot, Edmonton)

We heard about The Melting Pot coming into Edmonton. For those that don’t know, Melting Pot is a chain restaurant down in the States. A very popular chain might I add. They specialize in fondues – cheese, broth, oil, chocolate… they do it all but they had me at “cheese”.

We went for the first time with another couple and quite liked it. Recently my sister came to Edmonton for a visit and me being calorie conscious, asked, “Do you want to go to Melting Pot or Corso while you’re here?” to which she matter-of-factly said, “Both”. So both we went (and onto the treadmill I was for 1.5 hours over that weekend).

Before she even opened the menu, I knew we would have to have the Spinach and Artichoke Cheese Fondue as a starter (as much as I love cheese, my sister loves artichoke). Much to my calorie-counting chagrin, my boyfriend D wanted to get the “Big Taste” a feature menu set with 4 courses – cheese fondue, salad, entree fondue, and dessert fondue. I was convinced when the server informed me, “Calories is a bad word here!” (yes, I have little will power hence the 30 lbs weight gain in 2 years).

The current Big Taste menu was Latin but we could customize and substitute the cheese, salad, and dessert from the regular menu. So we decided on:

1. Spinach and Artichoke Cheese Fondue

2. Shrimp Ceviche Salad

3. Mojo Style Fondue

4. Their Original Chocolate Fondue (because chocolate and peanut butter is another weakness of mine)

The cheese fondue was served with apples, veggies, bread, and tortilla chips. The consistency was perfect – gooey goodness. Our server made the fondue at the table and mentioned it was his favourite – I can see why. It was indulgent dipping the chips into the spinach/artichoke cheese. My gadget-obsessed boyfriend D fell in love with the fondue pot which works like a double broiler (space for water underneath).

The salad was good – we all ordered the Shrimp Ceviche, I’ve always liked the pairing of shrimp and avocado so I couldn’t go wrong with this choice. My sister did comment though that the salad course wasn’t necessary with all the food we had coming, which is very true.

The entree fondue was good a citrusy broth and we ordered the Fondue Feast which includes chicken, pork, beef tenderloin, filet mignon, lobster,etc. While it was yummy, I do  prefer the hot rock option that Grizzly House in Banff provides as a break between the fondues. I do have to say I love the Green Goddess dipping sauce with the mushroom caps.

And of course, my chocolate peanut-butter fondue. What’s amazing about Melting Pot is that they don’t skimp out on the dessert fondue. You’d think chocolate, peanut butter, and fruit are enough but no, the chocolate fondue comes with this platter of dunkables like cheesecake, brownies, pound cake, strawberries, pineapple, banana, and marshmallows. AND the marshmallows come covered in chocolate or graham cracker! Something sinfully delicious about dunking a chocolate covered marshmallow into more chocolate. A normal platter serves two but with three of us, our server brought us out a full other platter of dunkables… (Thanks Mr. Server)

A good thing about this being a chain restaurant is that my calorie counting app has almost all the items in its library. After entering in every dish, I’d consumed 1200 calories in that one meal! Hmm… so maybe it’s not a good thing. But those cheese and chocolate fondues were worth every minute on that treadmill.