Melting Pot — Restaurant in Kansas City

A quick summary, since this is a long review: This restaurant is excellent, accommodating to dietary and mobility needs, great wait staff, and a memorable occasion. Bring your appetite, plan for at least 2 hours to eat, and plan on spending about $50 to $100 per person, depending on how much you want to augment an already extravagant and thoroughly enjoyable meal. For the dinner described below, it was $120 before tip for two adult diners. There are children's options available- a family was dining with two young children while we were being seated.

We went for an anniversary dinner and I cannot recommend this place enough. Our main server was Theresa, and she was pleasant, accommodating, and a lovely conversationalist. Sarah and Kevin, the managers, were also friendly and welcoming. The hosts were patient and polite, and were quick to respond to questions and requests from guests.

This restaurant practices course-style dining while offering a la carte options. So, be prepared to spend at least $50-$70 per person, not including extras or cocktails. I also recommend blocking out at least 2 hours to eat, since fondue is intrinsically a relaxed style of dining. I would recommend visiting this restaurant as a couple or in a small group of 4, since most of the courses are portioned 'for two'. We were seated at 7 and finished just after 9:30.

On to what we ordered. My date and I opted for the Complete Experience for Two.

For the Cheese course (the starter), we got the Classic Alpine cheese (Gruyère, Raclette, and Fontina cheeses, White Wine, Garlic, and Nutmeg). This was a superbly balanced cheese with a slight cooling finish from the nutmeg. It was served with green apples, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, French Bread and Pretzel Bread.

After Cheese was the Salad course. I got the house salad (Mixed Greens, Cheddar cheese, Tomatoes, Croutons, Scallions, Hard-boiled Egg, and Choice of Dressing. I got the house dressing which was a creamy honey mustard and was delightfully balanced) and my girlfriend got the California Salad (Mixed Greens, Candied Pecans, Gorgonzola cheese crumbles, Tomatoes, and Raspberry Vinaigrette). While small, the flavors in these salads packed a huge punch!

For the entrée, we chose the Coq Au Vin broth (vegetable, no chicken to be found, much to my delight as someone who's allergic to chicken). My date got the Pacific Rim (Shrimp, Teriyaki-Marinated Steak, Sesame-Crusted Ahi Tuna, and Duck Breast. The standard comes with chicken potstickers but the staff was lovely about substituting extra duck to accommodate my aforementioned allergy.) I got the Garden Pot (Impossible-brand Polpettes, Red Onion, Asparagus, Zucchini, Mini Sweet Peppers, and Wild Mushroom Ravioli). We shared between us and I can confirm that it was all delicious, but my favorite thing of this course was the mushrooms that come with the broth. The Burgundy wine and combination of seasonings made those mushrooms enough to go back for.

Dessert was the Flaming Turtle chocolate fondue. Milk chocolate is melted with caramel and topped with candied pecans. The server then used 151 Rum to flambé the pot and add a lovely bit of theater to an already memorable meal. Dippers for this course included strawberries, bananas, sweet Belgian-style waffles, crisp rice treats, brownies, blondies, pound cake cubes, and marshmallows covered in dark chocolate cookie crumbs.

I look forward...

I believe in giving credit when it's due. I chose this location because my wife really enjoyed the dessert fondue when we stopped in for dessert last year.

Yesterday was our 6th wedding anniversary. We didn't get to do anything special last year, because of the pandemic. We had an 8pm reservation. I was concerned with it being later in the evening. I can tell you the service was AMAZING later in the evening. Our server MICHAEL H. was attentive, understanding, exceptional, outgoing, and above all else took care of us on our special day. My wife had so many good things to say about him in our way home from dinner.

We had an experience as well as a meal. We had the BIGGER night out for 2. I had mentioned when we ordered drinks that we weren't interested in lobster. But after ordering Michael came back to double check we wanted lobster as it was included in the bigger night out package. We ordered a charcuterie board with our appetizer and fondue and despite a small mixup with my salad the night was amazing!

Like I mentioned it was our 6th anniversary. So I had already asked for the "Touch of Romance" package as well as a Rose for my beautiful wife. When we arrived rose petals in the shape of a heart were on the table. A rose in a vase sat in front of my wife's chair. During dessert our server went out of his way and had special plates made up for our anniversary. That small little attention to detail made my wife so happy. Along with champagne and dessert fondue it brought our amazing night to a close. Our server let us know that the rose and vase were ours to take home. I expected the rose, but the vase as well was a nice surprise.

I don't normally go out of my way to write these reviews but this Young man deserves all the credit and then some. The world needs more servers like this man, it's good to know that customer service hasn't died with the pandemic. We want to extend a special thank you to Michael and a HUGE Thank you to The Melting Pot for making this whole...

TL:DR Good server. Good atmosphere. Bad cheese fondue. Bad boiling pot. Cheese evaporated away before our very eyes. Took 1.5 hours for entrees to come out. (Id honestly like a refund if possible)

Long In Depth review: I went here on my anniversary date with my Girlfriend and got the $122 dinner for 2. First off our server was SO GOOD. She was so nice that we found it hard to just straight up be like this “yo this foods wack” I don’t know we just found it completely mediocre. It just was not a good culinary experience. Alpine classic cheese fondue is really off-tasting. its vinegary in a bad way and i ate alot because its $122 and i tried to see the appeal (this place gets so much hype props ig) but it just really upset my stomach to be honest. straight E tier. also they dont bring out the entree until you’re done with the fondue! WEIRD! even after its been 60 minutes and youre just miserably picking at the stale bread, cold hard broccoli, green apples?? and BABY CARROTS (?? ) around.

The meats raw so thats always fun! A grill should be ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY or at-least pitched to the table because you don't get it with a soup or oil cooking style option. Our poor server recommended the mojo boiling pot so we took it and dude it was so sour and acidic as well. Just an odd liquid im being so serious its supposed to be caribbean?? i don’t know.

We reluctantly cooked all the meat in the mystery mojo soup and just yeah boiled steak is typically mid and I can admit I should’ve just asked for the grill but itd be better if it was the default just on the culinary aspect. This is just our personal experience and everything else was fine just yeah the food and process itself was bad and inconvenient. Very odd business structure. We didn’t stay for dessert so our sweet server got us a dessert coupon and thats very appreciated.Theres somehow honestly more I could say but ill keep it at this. Thank you server and host and manager dude but i wont be returning. Still...