Melting Pot — Restaurant in Derwood

Sept 2021 More of a 3.5 stars. Very interesting experience, good food, decent service, and very expensive. Reservations are recommended, and plan to be there for at least 2.5 hours. All the staff wear masks.

The place is clean, dimly lit, and has many 2 people booths in addition to tables. It seems that 1 fondue pot is for 2 people. Each person gets 2 skewers, and they give each person different colored skewers. We were seated at a 2 person booth.

I am a little iffy on the placement of the pot, which is by the far corner opposite the booth seats. On the one hand, all the food is spread out between us and the pot. Plus the servers cook the cheese fondue at the table, so they have easy access to the pot. On the other hand, you have to stretch to put things in or take them out. And if you have to go searching for something, you have to stand up to see into the pot.

The service was rocky at first, but managed to improve a bit. We arrived a few minutes before our reservation and were promptly seated. We then waited 15 minutes before our server arrived. About 5 minutes in, someone came by to give us water and said our server would be along soon. When our server did arrive, he apologized for the wait and was very friendly and earnest. I did get the vibe that he was new and trying too hard to impress, but I give him points for trying. I do think he could have checked on us more often, as he mainly delivered each course and came back after we were done with each. This led to a few minutes of waiting between each course.

We had the 4-course dinners for 2: cheese, salad, entree, and dessert. The cheese fondue is cooked at the table. Note all the cheese fondues have some kind of alcohol as a base, which is boiled out. The cheese course comes an assortment of breads, veggies, and freshly chopped apple. Very yummy. The salads were good, with fresh and crisp greens.

Also, I highly recommend the Bee's Tea (non-alcoholic). It was very good: sweet, citrusy, and with a nice lavender taste that you feel in your nose. Very refreshing.

The pots for the entree and dessert course come ready made from the kitchen. With the entree comes six side sauces, and not necessarily those listed on the little table menu. Our favorites were the Green Goddess and the Yogurt Curry. You also get special plates for the entrees, with four little depressions to the side for the sauces. I personally found it easier to just spoon the sauces directly onto my food, but I admit that's not very sophisticated 😜. The food with the entrees was decent, nothing amazing. Sadly, there were no potstickers that night, and we didn't learn that until after the plates were delivered to the table. According to our server, it's a not uncertain whether potstickers are available at any given day since they're popular and tend to go quickly. Also note that even though there's not a lot of food delivered, it is still very filling!

A note on the cooking times. The server does tell you the cooking times for each type of food. If you forget, the times are listed on the little table menu. Also, there is a cooking timer on the website. From the menu, hit "The Experience". At the very bottom is a "Use Fondue Timer" button, which will open a new window. There are timers for chicken, beef, pork, fish/shrimp, veggies, and pasta.

After the entree, everything except the skewers and napkins are cleared from the table. Finally, it's the dessert course! The chocolate fondue is already made and just needs a few minutes to heat up. I believe the flambeed fondues are lit at the table, but I'm just guessing. It comes with an assortment of sweets and fruit. Note the server will ask if you want a second helping of any of the dessert items.

I would go back just for the chocolate fondue. Though I would order it to go so I can use up all the fondue with more goodies than they provided us 😋.

This is definitely more an experience place than a food place. The food was good, but I feel like coming here is more for the experience of fondue than anything else. Especially when...

I only gave a 1 star because I had to. Worst experience ever! I have ate with my husband in 3 melting pots. 1 in Florida and twice in Gaithersburg. All 3 were very special occasions. Florida location exceeded expectations. They were amazing and their pictures were just the same when we sat down. My 1st experience with Gaithersburg was ok. Time wise and food was a 3 star. However the service was amazing my 1st time in Gaithersburg. Very attentive, funny, charismatic server. This 3rd time was my second time eating at the Gaithersburg location. First as we walked in, we were not greeted. We had to announce our selfs. The place was not busy at all. Anyways, we got a 4 course for 2. On menu it was being advertised 35 per person for a 3 course add a dessert fondue for 5 dollars more per person. Anyways we ordered. When we get out fondue, i was shocked! We got what was fondue for 3 pieces of bread. Mind you, I only got about 5 pieces of dry hard bread. I did however get a whole bunch of celery pieces and like 3 pieces of apples. I don't like celery so i just gave it to my husband, wich he ate without dipping as there was not enough fondue on the pot. Before he poured the cheese and wine, he looked at the wine as if he had done something wrong. Looked at it, smelled it and had a confused look on his face. What ever he was thinking, he went ahead and served it. He stirred the cheese immediately after pouring in the pot. Kind of like if he was stirring an egg. That method i get once the cheese is hot. When i took the first bite of bread dipped, the amount of garlic on that cheese was unbelievable! So much garlic it was over powering the whole cheese. I love garlic! But as a fondue fanatic, i know measurements of each ingredient is absolutely necessary. Usually we see them pour the wine, the garlic, let it heat and gradually stir in the cheese. He said he would fix it. Left,came back about 15 minutes later, dumped some cheese in and stirred again.The cheese he dumped made it better as far as the garlic, but as i mentioned, short lived as we was only able to dip 3 pieces of bread in it! Salad followed, The Caesar salad, the nuts give it extra love.This time i had 3 nuts maybe and 3 croutons and so dry! My husband gave me his to make my salad better. We than got our Entree. A tray with 1 broccoli, 3 potato wedges, 2 little pieces of sweet potato 2 slices of zucchini and 3 pieces of mushroom for my husband and I. His looked plentiful and meat looked fresh and delicious. Mine was so bad! 3 little squares of salmon wich tasted horrible after dipping,3 pieces of chicken, 3 of shrimp and 4 very thin sliced meat. The cuts were so small! Nothing like the 1st time. 3 or 4 pieces but they were definitely bigger cuts. We loved the goddess dip last time.This time we got extra thinking it would be the same. Sadly to say, it was stateless and we didn't eat it.Last but not the least our dessert. I got the ying yang, it was so empty we could not dip all the dessert fruit and bread wich was only 1 tiny brownie, 2 marshmallows, a whole bunch of pretzels, 2 strawberry half, 2 pineapple chunks, 2 waffle pieces and 1 what it seemed like bread pudding. All this took an unbelievable amount of time. We reserved at 7: 15 pm and left after 10 pm. I felt so bad for my husband,as he kept apologising to me over and over for the terrible experience. It was my birthday! To add the last of the horrible experience,he paid over 100 dollars!! Not including a tip of 25 dollars for the server. Wasn't it 40 per person? I got ice water due to im not allowed to drink at the moment. We left and he still stopped at a fast food restaurant to grab 2 burgers as he was still so hungry! We could have had dinner at a much better restaurant for that price. We thought it would be a nice experience again.We were so wrong.Such a disappointment! Ohh and the...

We had a very nice Christmas Eve dinner at The Melting Pot. A four course meal will set you back anywhere from 40 to 50 dollars, not including your beverages. Along with the meal we had soft drinks and I included a wine flight that pairs a 3 oz glass of wine with each course. Total cost for two was approximately $135 before tip. I didn’t feel like it was over priced. However, I did feel like it was super easy to over eat.

First Course - cheese fondue

The cheese fondue was made at our table and was very good. I can’t recall whatconsisted type(s) of cheese they used, but the fondue of the cheese, white wine, garlic, shallots and dates.

Unfortunately, it is really easy to fill up on this course with all the bread, veggies and chips you get to drag the delicious cheese into your mouth.

Second course - salad

The salad was incredibly small by comparison. Our salad consisted of spinach, bacon bits, tomato and blue cheese dressing.

Very tasty and a good pallet cleanser.

Third course - the meats (and/or veggies)

When choosing your meats, the choices can be overwhelming. Several different beef, pork, chicken and seafood options that you can select from to create your entree. I should point out now that the meats, seafood and veggies come to the table raw. Many of the choices are marinated, some are naked. You get to cook your own stuff just the way you like. It was a little intimidating at first, but you quickly figure out by sight when stuff is done.

Fortunately, they offer suggested grouping on he menu to help diners make up their mind. We opted for the local house special that consisted of cold water lobster tail, scallops, teriyaki marinated beef, fillet mignon and marinated chicken.

After you choose your components, you are not ready to go quite yet! You still have to choose your cooking liquid. There were four options with various flavorings and liquids. We opted for the Mojo option... Caribbean-inspired bouillon bursting with flavors of fresh garlic and citrus.

For me, this was the star of the show. While we waited for our morsels of meat to cook at the end of our individual colored fondue forks, we talked and laughed. This course took quit a while to finish, but we managed to eat every morsel.

Fourth course - dessert

Our meal came with a white chocolate fondue with bananas foster laden on top. Along with the fondue we were given a plate with many different bites of cakes, brownies and fruits.

So... this is where I ran out of steam. It was over the top sweet. While I did appreciate the presentation, I can’t give this a perfect score. The fondue was really good, but the cakes and brownie squares were too sweet to begin with.

In conclusion... if you’ve never been to The Melting Pot, go - at least once - to add to your life experiences. I...