Melting Pot — Restaurant in Town of Cheektowaga

This was my first experience here, Thanks to my sister and her boyfriend and a good friend of hers. They asked me to tag along because I haven’t been having the best week due to personal things happening in my life. they insisted, so I accepted. but the night didn’t turn out/end how we expected. Upon arriving, they made a reservation for 4, so a nice lady took us to our table. So then our waiter came to our table, a young gentleman served us tonight and I don’t remember his name, but he was very nice at first. We got the entree course for two, x2 which comes with four courses. He brung out the first one and forgot to turn on the heaters so we asked for another waitress to turn it on, she was very nice about it and explained this happening sometimes. So we didn’t mention it to him. We ate and were satisfied with that course, then it was salads next. So he brung those out after and he forgot to bring extra utensils, considering we only started with two pouches. After sitting there for a good 10 mins, he came around to check on us and we asked for extra, and again he was nice and brung forks out. We ate and were on to the next course which is you’re broth and meat. He also forgot to bring extra skewers, so we asked for extra cause we only had one at the time. He went to “get” them and didn’t come around for another good 10-15 mins to check on us when we again asked for extra, and he apologized and ran to give us extra skewers which we understood and just thought he’s had a long day, so we were nice about it and we made our food which is a lengthy process. Someone at the table wanted to ask for extra veggies but he was rushing around and they never got a chance which again, we understood, wasn’t a big deal. Then after waiting again, he came around to clean up and said he’d bring a container for the extra meat I had on my plate. Which he did not until the end. Totally fine. But next course was chocolate fondue, which just to mention he had to re ask one of us about which one we wanted cause he forgot. But he brung them out, no problem. We ate and had plenty of choc and dippers to take home. He dropped off the receipt and continued on to charge us. My sister and her friend decided to split it which to mention is nice of them considering the amount was 240+ but they insisted. So my sister tipped 10 in cash and then tipped 15 from the card on top of that, and her friend tipped 5. After they scanned, the waiter stood there with a unsteady look on his face and seriously asked if he did anything wrong with our service tonight which we thought was a common question, and we agreed we were satisfied. After a couple seconds of talking, he pointed to the receipt to the bottom where it says “suggested tips” and said, this is the suggested tipping. My sister said “yeah, I tipped you ten and fifteen from my card” and he said “yeah but she tipped me 5” and pointed to my sisters friend which put her on the spot and clearly made her uncomfortable. She expressed that, that was all she could afford considering she split half the bill with my sister, and she apologized? The young man then sat there for a second and then said okay and grabbed our plates and stormed off clearly distraught. We all sat there very uncomfortable and confused and i explained how I’ve never heard that before. He brung me the container I asked for again and I said thank you and got a “mhm” as he stormed off again, which again I had to find him and ask for another for our dippers. And got another mhm. He then came back and my sister asked about the choc that we told him to his face before we paid that we wanted to take it home and he said “oh I threw it out” so surprised, my sister said oh okay? And he said yeah sorry and walked off again. Moral of this story, never expect anything from anyone, cause he was clearly upset about a $30 tip and we believe he threw her food out as payback, which isn’t ok. He needs to be humbled cause not everyone that comes in has it EZ with their $$. That is all I...

Visited The Melting Pot for the first time last night, and unfortunately I can’t say I’ll be returning. If you’re on the fence about visiting this place because you’re pretty sure you could do what they do at home better, and for way cheaper, you’re one hundred percent correct. To start, the cheese was not properly emulsified, instead of being creamy it was quite gritty which was disappointing right off the bat. Dippers tasted cheap and boring; the bread was not fresh, we were hardly given any broccoli, and the rest was so forgettable I genuinely couldn’t tell you what else there was. The meats were obviously the cheapest they could find; the teriyaki steak was essentially cheap stew meat with an over abundance of seasoning to try to cover up the fact that it was cheap stew meat. The dessert was actually really good, but here is where I’d like to get into the issue with the service. We sat down around 7:20pm and didn’t get out until about 10pm. There was a woman, who was not our server but clearly someone who worked there, who periodically peeked around the corner and scoffed because we were still there. To be clear, we were not there late because we wanted to be, but because there were long stretches of time where we did not see our server between courses. Furthermore, it was a Monday night and they were not very busy. The dessert was meant to be refillable meaning we could get more dippers until we were out of chocolate, but after the first round of dippers we were given the bill and when we asked for more it was like we had lobsters crawling out of our ears. To the servers credit, he did still bring out additional dippers but it did not include the full array of options, only what he could apparently find left over. The whole ordeal was just over $200 plus a $40 tip for a table of 4 with no drinks or extras. Overall the food was painfully average, lower quality than Olive Garden at steakhouse prices. Although our server was very nice, the service was poor, painfully slow, and the staff clearly was very frustrated that we were there past close… which was out of our control. My best piece of advice to someone who reads this review would be to go to Aldi, buy a block of velveeta and your favorite bread/veggies, save yourself $200 plus tip and make the...

UPDATE: Shortly after my first visit, the owner, Jim, called me personally to express his concern about the experience my girlfriend and I had. He even sent me and us a $75 gift certificate to encourage us to give his restaurant another try.

We went to the Melting Pot again on Saturday 4/29. We had 7:00 reservations. We were running late so I called ahead to let them know we would be 15-20 minutes late. No problem... We arrived at the restaurant and were seated within five minutes. Every thing about the meal was as one might expect. The service from Madalyn was excellent. She easily answered questions we had about the menu. The manager, Walter, stopped by during our meal to make sure everything was ok, which it was. The food was excellent. When I wad a kid we would have fondue from time to time - meat or cheese. What a treat to have cheese fondue, meat fondue, and dessert fondue, as well as a great salad all in one sitting!

I'm upgrading my rating from one star to five. I highly recommend the Melting Pot and look forward to enjoying their fine fare again in the future. Thanks, Jim! FIRST VISIT: I was extremely disappointed overall. I had my doubts about a chain restaurant that would be over $100 not including drinks. Boy was I right! The service was way off - think Applebees on a bad night with their worst server and that's what we experienced. The Melting Pot has a complicated menu and the hostess after asking us, failed to tell our server that we were first time customers. Things that happened: I ordered seltzer with lemon and got tonic water. The bill ended up having both on it. When we thought we ordered filet mignon for our entree, we got everything - including shrimp and salmon when neither of us eat seafood. My girlfriend ate a quarter of her meat and I ate half of mine. When we were done, I asked the server to wrap it up and it got thrown away because they can't allow us to take uncooked meat home. Somewhere early on, a kid cleaning up ran a carpet sweeper under our table! On the positive side of things, the food was really good. Unfortunately, the service will keep me...