Melting Pot — Restaurant in Austin

I want to preface this with the fact that the staff all seemed super nice and helpful, and knowledgeable, this is an indictment on the concept itself, not the people who made it happen.

We had 6 people, we sat at the biggest table and it was a weird shape, so two of us ended up with our backs in a corner. Not super comfy, whatever nbd. As drinks and cheese course come things felt crowded already despite being at the biggest table.

The seats are also low, so if you're short good luck trying to fish out any item you dropped in without awkwardly standing and straining to reach. I guess a smaller table would have helped with this but then it would have been even more crowded.

Salads were good! I'm guessing the kitchen was short staffed because it was taking a bit between courses.

After we'd been there for 2 whole hours the main was finally ready. I was told not to eat a lot the day of because I'd be stuffed by the time I left.

Well that meant I was getting super hungry by 830 when we'd gotten there at 630. Whatever, I'll live.

Here's my chief complaint: The logistics of having several different types of items to dip (as a means of cooking it, they come raw) means you're constantly doing 3-4 things at once. Veggies for 1-2 min, seafood for 2-3, meat for 3-4 - if you want to have a couple bites at once instead of waiting to cook every morsel individually then you better have a stopwatch going and a good memory.

Accidentally leave the duck in too long? It's tough. Too short? Tastes raw. Shrimp too. And I don't understand why we'd want to boil steak in the first place, but a grill wasn't an option since between 6 people we had the choice of just two cooking methods, and those were the two the guest of honor picked.

Everyone is also doing all of this at the same time. Between 6 people with 3 skewers each we had around half a dozen or more skewers in each pot at a time. Which means removing them from the pots gets tricky, and some items just don't stay on the skewer that well to begin with (looking at you, impossible meatball), much less if you're trying to slide out it past another skewer like a game of Kerplunk.

Desert was okay, but I was beyond ready to be done with the place by the time it came.

The portions were adequate I guess, I left feeling satisfied but not "stuffed".

Next time someone brings it up as an option for dinner I'm going to suggest...

Sad to give this one star since I love this place but given my most recent visit yesterday, I will no longer be coming here again.

My husband took me out to dinner and well from the beginning, the service was awful. We got seated shortly after arriving and no one came to our table until over 15 minutes after we were seated.

Each time something came to our table, it was a different waiter helping us.

We’d ask for additional things and no one came to bring it. Examples are more water, more broccoli and lemon.

I’d also ordered a nonalcoholic drink, and when the waiter brought it, she didn’t name it such, so I was skeptical that it had alcohol in it.

Once my waiter came, I asked her to double check that it was nonalcoholic as I am pregnant and didn’t to drink it if it was and it not only took her over 10 minutes to come back to my table, but she assured me that it was non alcoholic but anyways I started feeling funny. So my own judgement led me to not drink it. My taste buds aren’t the same since covid last year but I noticed the drink was very watery. It’s usually milky and creamy and it was far from that. NO ONE offered to make us another drink, the waiter simply said she will take it off the tab…

Anyways. What’s normally an exceptional experience at melting pot in Austin, was garbage. We didn’t make a fuss about the whole drink thing, but as we were leaving my husband had a chat with the manager who basically told him his words mean nothing and that they would take their bartenders word over his regardless.

At the end of the day all we really would have wanted out of the whole experience is, for a manager to come to our table and ensure us that the drink was non alcoholic and perhaps offer to make a new one but no one did anything. No one even apologized until my husband went to talk to the manager.

Anyways, I’m hoping your experience is better then mine. I was just here last Friday, and my service was...

I’m not gonna give anything less than 5 stars because my wife and I love this place and come here at least once a year. The price is good for what you get and normally we have no problems at all. However this last time was less than perfect for me. First off the drink I order was not very good. I got the modern old fashioned which comes with a spoonful of brown sugar, an orange peel, and shot of whiskey, a large ice cube and a fancy cherry. The brown sugar was just sitting at the bottom not dissolved at all, the orange peel was very lazily done- it was just a chunk of peel (the picture showed a nice twist of peel), and the cherry was completely missing. If this were chilis, I wouldn’t care, but I expect more when I’m paying $12 for the drink and $150 for two people to eat. I was pretty unhappy with the drink. Second, the party room or large group room or whatever you want to call it was being extremely loud and obnoxious. It pretty much ruined my experience. Literally constantly screaming and laughing as loud as possible. CONSTANT. I’m all for having a good time but come on. We’re at a nice restaurant trying to enjoy a mean for my wife’s birthday. We’re not at a bar. They need to kindly ask them to quiet down or shut the curtains. Lastly, which this isn’t even a big deal because our waitress was very nice, but she talked to us like we were kids or something. Idk. Just talk to us like we’re people. Don’t whisper like the girl at the massage parlor on “Friends.” Hopefully some of you get that reference. This was definitely the worst experience I’ve had at The Melting Pot. I’m sure we will go back because my wife loves this place, but honestly, if this kind of stuff happens again, I think it might be...