Melting Pot — Restaurant in Bellevue

We had a late night reservation on Valentines Day. Ultimately we had a good meal, but the rest left something to be desired. We arrived at about 10:30pm for our 10:45pm reservation and we're immediately told that they were running a bit behind. Absolutely no worries, it's Valentines Day, this is to be expected. Oh and don't let me forget that in the waiting area there was a persistent drip of water from the ceiling on to me and the gentlemen next to me, like right on our head. We decided to go wait in the small bar area and the bartender was absolutely fantastic and he was swamped. After about 40 mins we decided to go ask the hostess how much longer she expected it to be, seeing as we were seeing loads of other couples being seated and we informed her we would be at the bar and she said that she would come get us. She instantly seated us as if she forgot about us entirely. Strike one. Upon being seated we were greeted by Grayden and he was a nice kid who was extremely pleasant and informative. Did I forget to mention that we had to change seating positions at the table because water was dripping from the ceiling again down my girlfriends back at the table? Now if water is dripping in the lobby and at the table and we are eating an open pot of food, who is to say where else it's dripping? The opening manager Dave came over and was absolutely stellar. It was at this time that Grayden informed us he would be doing things a little out of order because we had to wait so long. So he started the cheese fondue before the bruschetta and then brought thr bruschetta and salad together while we had just started eating the cheese fondue. I couldn't help but feel like we were being rushed cuz we were the end of the night. Which I thought that the point if the 5 course meal was to be 5 courses.. not 3 courses at once and then and addition 2 individually. The food was really delicious and despite the rush Grayden was attentive, however by the time we got to our dessert course, and i felt like we were eating at a faster pace than my previous experiences with the melting pot, there were maybe 5 other couples in the restaurant, it felt like the place was being closed around us. Cleaning. A manager who i did not speak to or know his name, even took the time to inspect the cleaning if a young lady and talk to her in what i considered a disrespectful manner. He continued to shuffle around barking at all the employees about closing duties.. a real romantic ambiance for our dessert course. But nonetheless thw chocolate fondue was delicious. We finished up and paid our over $300 bill (for one drink, two 5 course valentines day meals, their surcharge to mske up for min wage increase, and they include a 20% gratuity by default) and on the way out we had to use the restroom. To get there we had to walk through the sea if loitering employees who were clearly chomping at the bit to go home. And i get that it was after 1am. Upon getting to the restroom my girlfriend found the womens being cleaned and when asked if it was open was told, ya give me a min. The floors were soaking wet snd my girlfriend nearly slipped and fell down. The urinal that i used did not flush and had a full basin of urine in it. And there were no paper towels. I understand that this is one of the busiest days or weeks of their year probably and they are all tired and beat, but that does not excuse a poor experience. I chose to not address it with Manager Barky McBarkBark because based on my observations I did not expect a positive reaction and i did not want to ruin the end of my Valentines Day date. Additionally the website stated we would be given a $50 gift certificate to use anytime this year for coming to the $125 per person special and we did not receive or hear any mention of this. Again i did not ask because by the end of the dessert course we did not feel welcome any longer. I have had great experiences at the melting pot in the past but the last time was many years ago and this was a huge...

I thought that the service from the waitress was great but the food and drinks were subpar. Let me explain. The waitress was attentive and very nice. I appreciate all of her work. We ordered the full 4 course meal (Big Night Out Dinners for Two). The cheese fondue was good but we received almost half of what we received a few years ago. We had photos of our last visit and you could see the difference. It only took about a minute or two to finish the cheese. The bread, fruit, and vegetables were good but they were missing some from our last visit.

The salad was good but lacking an adequate amount of salad dressing. That’s the case with most restaurants these days. The main course was good. We thought that the meat tray was great and of high quality. The vegetables on the other hand consisted of 3-4 thin slices of something (squash maybe), a few pieces of part of a potato, and mushrooms. In the past, we used to get a lot of vegetables, especially potatoes. We were shocked by the limited amount given. Potatoes are cheap, I think we got a ½ of a small potato (cut up).

The dessert disappointed. We ordered the milk chocolate “Pure Chocolate Fondue.” This was a total bait and switch. “Pure” would infer something that has been untampered with, correct? Well, it’s not! It’s watered down, literally. The pot came out and I noticed that the chocolate was already saucy and wet like from a Hershey’s chocolate squirt bottle. The waitress said that they add hot water to the chocolate. It’s totally watered down. I spread some on my cold plate and it never hardened. It was gross. I also noticed, and we have past photos to prove that we received about ½ of the chocolate that we received last time. I looked back at the menu because we were missing a lot of the dipping items for every other visit too. It just says, “sweet treats and fresh fruits.” I know they aren’t specifically listed but we were missing the marshmallows, cheesecake, whole strawberries (we had 1 that was cut up into pieces), apples, etc.

Other issues- The bartender can’t make an Old Fashioned. If you can’t make that drink, you shouldn’t be a bartender. It wasn’t chilled prior to pouring and the orange wasn’t swiped across the rim. If you drink them, you know what I’m talking about. I can already hear the MP saying, well it’s our version. If so, then stop calling it an Old Fashioned. Call it a Lazy Whiskey.

The top reason that we won’t go back is because of the 4% surcharge (they keep it all). This should be against the law. It’s a total lie about how much your food cost. For example, the $140 for two meal isn’t $140, it’s $145.60. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s 4% on everything. It’s like paying an extra 4% tax on an already hefty priced meal. Just be HONEST! Show the actual price for what the items cost.

How could we go back? A 4% surcharge, less cheese in the fondue, ½ of the chocolate in the dessert, less vegetables, less dessert dipping food. As far as I can tell, they’re charging more and giving less. Oh yeah, it took about 30 minutes to get the 2nd drink. The waitress had to go see what was going on. We eat out a lot and I don't mind paying good money for good food and service. They need to make some changes. Unfortunately, some of these needed changes are probably from corporate. This is how you see a company start to nose dive and they'll say that they can't...

HOT OIL WARNING! I'm not a person who writes reviews but after telling other people what happened I feel I need to warn others to not eat here or at least not to order the hot oil to cook meat. We went on February 2nd, at 6:30 for our 21st anniversary and reserved it 2 weeks prior. The server told us she was new and to be patient with her.  We were seated at the smallest table in the restaurant and were struggling for space the entire time even though there were plenty of larger tables.  It took a long time for our first drinks and our server said the bar is really slow. She forgot to put in our second drinks and we'd had to ask for them again which took a really long time with the slow bar.  One of our salads, a ceasar, had absolutely no dressing so we shared the other one.  The server offered us another one but we decided to move onto the entrée. It took about 45 minutes of checking the oil to get it up to temperature and for the meat to arrive.  The oil never seemed to get up to 325° but it was smoking and the pot was making cracking noises which I filmed. I tried a piece of mushroom and the oil BUBBLED AND SPAT LIKE A VOLCANO 1 foot away from our faces. The server left the thermometer at our table and we realized that she was measuring in Celsius and the oil was actually 438° Fahrenheit. She asked someone from the kitchen to come help and they turned the oil down. We waited twenty minutes for it to cool and it was still at 400° so we turned it completely off. We told the server what happened and she said they never trained her properly with it.  We were so horrified that we asked for the manager and were informed that he didn't want to talk to us but eventually came over. He told us it's not their fault because only 2 people per week order the hot oil and they don't know how to use it. We finally got to cooking our mian course after being there for over 2 and a half hours and controlling the temperature ourselves with the thermometer.  I was exhausted so we cooked most of it to go and asked for our dessert to go.  By the time we got our dessert and paid it had been nearly 3 hours. I then used the bathroom before we left and it was disgusting. The kitchen staff told me they felt sorry for us because we were there for so long. We talked to the manager on our way out. He was incredibly rude, blaming us for our experience and told us 3 hours is a very average amount of time to spend at the restaurant.  He said he has absolutely no authority to take any amount of money off of the bill, which was almost $300, and he wants to quit his job because the owner doesn't fix anything within the restaurant. The manager had his business card hidden and told us there's no way to get ahold of the owner. He even showed us his phone with emails to the owner that were not returned. Lastly when we opened our dessert the next day it was the wrong one. Definitely the worst and scariest experience we've ever had in...