Melting Pot — Restaurant in Tallahassee

Early evening weekday Birthday Celebration with our two girls. Our server was very nice and professional. We ordered a drink from the bar & our server put them in & brought water. She returned & we ordered.

All 4 of us ordered adult meal experiences. We agreed on the cheese fondue but we could not agree on cooking style. Our girls wanted vegetable broth and I do not like that at all & wanted a different cooking style for the adults. Our server told us that we would have to choose the same cooking style & got the manager to confirm that our table would only support 1 cooking style.

I was disappointed & asked if we could move to a table that would support 2 cooking styles but the manager said there were not any available. I was ready to walk but our server graciously said the girls could use the table behind us & cook their food & we could use our table for our cooking style.

At that time we ordered their charcuterie board & the server went to get our drinks. At this point service got pretty slow but It's an experience & not fast food but service was slower for us than with other patrons around us. We finally got our drinks & our server brought the charcuterie board..

One of our girls wanted to use the bathroom so I escorted her. I had to touch a door to get her into the bathrooms & decided to wash my hands. Restroom was very clean. I washed my hands & dried them & saw a container of off brand hand sanitizer that said it was "equal to Purrell" I said "well it's a pandemic & the first time at a resuarant in 6 months so why not?". Huge mistake! It came out and looked almost like soap/otion. It smelled disgusting like distillery sanitizer and super strong peppermint smell. I tied to run it in but it never dried.

Back at the table it turned sticky & never dried out and left a residue on my hands like dried hand soap. I wasn't going to eat anything with that smell or residue on my hands and got up to go back to the bathroom and wash my hands Our girl had the same issue & went with me.

Back at the table we are the charcuterie board. The bread wasn't to my liking which was to be expected..Not my thing. Then I went with a piece of Salami & almost gagged. Something like almost sucking on a peppercorn bitterness. The other two pieces were tried at the table spit out by the other 3 people. It could have been our pallettes but they tasted bad to us.

Now the salads. I had a Ceasar. Dressing was spot on & everyone's veggies were fresh & really good. The Ceasar salad comes with pine nuts. The are obviously roasted with sugar. Too sweet for even the savory of the dressing but ok I get it. They were too hard and one of our girls and l had them jab us between our gums & teeth.

The main course was good but our lobster tail smelled and tasted really bad. It was rotten. I am not the type to complain. I just won't order again and of it's bad enough I will just speak with my wallet and won't come back. Overall ok at best. We started at 630pm and left around 930. Biggest issues were the bad tasting items, hand sanitizer and the fact that there were PLENTY of tables that would have accommodated our 2 cooking methods that we could see walking around the restaurant to the bathrooms. The restaurant was pretty much empty. They were totally wrong to tell us a table was not available to accommodate us since we were there from 630 to almost their closing time. Server was great though but when you spend almost $350 bucks for 2 adults and 2 children it could have...

I'm torn about how to rate this place. I think some would really enjoy it, but I had very mixed feelings. I hope my impression can help some decide if this is the sort of place they'd like. It is, as many say, more about the experience than the food. We recently went for the first time as a celebratory meal, so setting played a part. We started with drinks and I just had a beer, and my husband had a mixed drink. His was pretty good, though more on the sweet kids' flavor side! After agonizing over whether we could manage it, we chose four course meals despite not being big eaters. It was a good portion, perhaps just a little much. We started the food with the obvious for us, the Classic Alpine cheese. We've had fondue before, and regularly enjoy vegetables so the cheese really has to wow to improve them. It was what we were looking forward to most and enjoyed it, but we weren't especially impressed. As for the salads, we had the Melting Pot House and California. I thought mine tasted like lunchroom fancy with a little too much gorgonzola and my husband thought his was alright. They were presented nicely. For the soup, it was Court Bouillon with steak for my husband and Garden Pot for me. It came with a few vegetables for both of us. My husband seemed to like his steak and thought the cuts were good. My vegetables were awkward to handle with the fondue forks, being easily lost or hard to fish out. The vegetable meatballs often crumbled. As for the dessert, I was extremely surprised to find the Yin and Yang chocolate the best part despite not being very into sweets-- especially after a big meal. However, many of the dippers were too sweet for a balance with the chocolate, but the lightly sweetened cake and strawberries were good. My husband enjoyed dessert most, too, I think. My score for the food is a slightly hesitant 3/5, and my husband might say 4/5. I feel weird scoring it so low because it really wasn't bad, but nothing made us say, "wow!" The service was very, very good and accommodating. I appreciated the online reservation option. The atmosphere was alright, with some areas more darkened than others (we had a booth with harsh contrast and I see now in photos that I looked terrible, haha). The pop music was kind of weird to hear at a place trying to be a little classy. We enjoy dressing up and rarely get a chance and felt a little out of place with a few t-shirt wearers. But if you are going to pay this much, I suppose one can dress how they want, especially at a chain. Still, I'd like an encouraged dress code. Would we go again? Probably not, unless with friends. We would almost certainly just get cheese and chocolate fondue as a treat as these were the best parts. I know it's more about the experience and dimmed lights than food, but I'd like to enjoy the food a little more if I'm going to pay so much. It's actually not a bad price for four courses but the quality wasn't quite there to satisfy me. We're also well-acquainted with hot pot and even have one of our own, so some of the novelty wasn't there for us, though I think it would be more fun for others. Or, they might be no fun at all and resent paying to make their own food! We will have our own fun with fondue at home with candles in the foreseeable future. But if you tend to enjoy chains and don't mind spending a bit for the fun, I hope you have a...

My husband and I had a very unpleanst dinner yesterday because of an 'ANT' that came out from our food and the manager's attitude after he was aware of it!

We went there yesterday because it was Restaurant week and they also began the limed time 'Dip into Summer' menu. I ordered the restaurant week menu and my hubby had the special 'summer seafood catch' entree with lobster tail.

While we were enjoying the entree course, I scooped out the corn on the cob(which came as a complimentary veggie of my hubby's entree) from the pot with their so-called 'rescuer' spoon and put the corn on my plate, then I saw the dead ANT(the whole body) on top of the corn!!

Right on time, our server came to ask if we needed anything, so I explained her there is an ant in my food and showed it to her. She told me she would show it to her manager and brougt the whole plate immediately. She came back saying really sorry and the manager will come soon to speak to us. But it took quite long for him to come and we were very uncomfortable of how we were treated.

The manager didn't come until we finished our last dessert course and the server brought us the check, and when the manager finally came to us, we were really upset because of the way he spoke to us. He said that it was the first time they found an 'ANT' in their restaurant and so came to ask if it was on the table passing by. What is he thinking? Does he think that I grabbed the ant from the table and put in on my food to show him? It would rather be better if it was just an ant on the table, it was from the pot that we were eating!! I 'fortunately' scooped one 'dead ANT' out of it but how do I know there were more of it inside the broth? So I explained everything again that it was from the food and he said "oh,okay," and left and that was it.

When the server came back again to get the check, I told her that I don't think I should pay for the food with the ant in it, and she asked us back if the manager didn't say anything about it, I said no and she said she would check with the manager again. A little while later, the manager came back again with the new check with $25 discount and left.

Frankly speaking, we enjoyed our food until I found an ant, and our server, she was great, but the manager should know how to apologize properly first!

It was one of our favorite restaurants until yesterday, we went there pretty often, but won't go...