Melting Pot — Restaurant in Troy

I have never experienced a more blatant disregard for customer wishes in my life. We have been avid Melting pot visitors for years, it actually was our favorite place before this incident. Now I do not believe we will ever be comfortable enough to go back into ANY melting pot establishment. Let me start by saying we are 1000% aware that the menu has a very heavy alcohol relationship, but we have always supplemented the alcohol with the vegetable base without any real issue, of course we are usually met with some sort of reassurance that "the alcohol cooks off", to which I adamantly decline and inform them that we would just rather not have any alcohol. I'm not sure if this is a part of the standard procedure when they are met with alcohol concerns, but I do believe that is actually offensive. If I tell you I don't want alcohol, it should literally be that simple, I don't need to be met with an argument. My husband has been sober for going on 5 years and is in active recovery, so we are extremely careful and we do explain that we do not want any alcohol whatsoever to be included with our meal. While ordering I notified them that we did not want any alcohol, I was met with an extremely argumentative response about the alcohol cooks off, I let him finish his rant I then let him know that I understood what he was saying but, we would still prefer NOT TO HAVE ANY ALCOHOL INCLUDED WITH OUR MEAL(veggie base only). After 40 minutes, we got our cold, half melted cheese. We have never been to a melting pot that did not make the cheese in front of you, It not only kills the experience, but it was always helpful for us to see that there was no alcohol being served to us. We had not eaten since about the afternoon time frame so, we dug into the cheese when It arrived. To my immediate surprise there was beer in the cheese! My husband has just ingested beer after 5 years of sobriety! I almost did not believe it(after being so adamantly clear) so I got out of my seat to find the waiter to ask if there was alcohol added to our cheese. I could not find him so I went to the host station and ask then about it, they said they would go ask the back. We came to find out that there was in fact alcohol that was added to our cheese, no manager came over to our table the waiter came over and briefly said oh here’s your new cheese. No apology, no anything! My husband was almost hyper-ventilating at this point, so I went back up to the hosts table to ask for a manger. Which apparently there was one standing there, who replied with I’m a manager, yes I heard about the situation and had talked to the staff. She did not immediately apologize, she started off with an attempt to console me by telling me that the alcohol cooks off, so we would be fine. I said no Ma’am, I’m not sure if you are aware but taste is a trigger, and maybe you are not sensitive to this because you have never personally had a loved one who has struggled with addiction. She tried to tell me she did understand, and had personally gone through this, which if she had I’m not sure why it wasn’t made into a bigger issue. I am in literal tears at this point and I can hardly even keep my thoughts together. She then asked me what I wanted her to do, or what I was seeking out of this. I honestly think that she was assuming that I wanted a free meal or something. No ma’am what I want is for you to understand how big of a deal that this is. With this one “small” mistake that you are minimizing could have caused our family to fall into ruin and rob a man of not only 5 years of sobriety but his entire life! Not to mention going through all of this and having to explain to a 9 year old that we had to leave before her favorite part of the meal and go across the street to the shake Shack for dinner! Completely unacceptable! Truly the part that makes me the most angry is that If I came in there and told my waiter that I had a shellfish, or a peanut allergy, I’m damn sure you wouldn’t have tried to push one of those on me. Why is alcohol different?  Do better Melting Pot TROY!!...

So last night was our first time experiencing the melting pot we went there to celebrate my sister‘s bachelorette party as a dinner we had reservations we were sat we waited about 15 minutes before the waitress brought our cocktails and then we ordered the original and the Wisconsin cheddar were delicious but the alpine had way too much wine the kids did not like it we had to have them exchange it and they did but that took an additional 20 minutes and then we ordered the salads and they came back to the table with the smallest salad for the price like that really was ridiculous that and then we got the original chocolate and flaming turtle which was fine but we didn’t realize that the original had peanut butter in it so we wanted to ask our waitress about it and we ended up having to go online and look at the menu too make sure we had got what we ordered we had about five drinks between us the first ones look just like the menu the second two came back in regular cups little dry ice no garnish and very light in color not like the first one and then the third one just came back with no dry ice we were rushed since the moment we sat down horrible experience we had different servers and a manager keep coming in the room RUShING us since we got our sad little salads (maybe they made them that way on purpose )the manager kept coming by the table in the doorway and talking about how big this party is behind us again our reservation was at 6:15 and we left there by like 820 it was not our fault it took forever for them to come to the table to seat us the waitress was not good she probably came to the table 4 timesAnd she was tipped more than 20% the manager I talk to you at the hostess station when I left was very kind and understanding she told me that cheese and chocolate shouldn’t have had us there as long as we were but again how could we have ate any faster with nothing in the table I told her that When the reservation was made it had no indication of a time limit again we were only there for about two hours half of that time was waiting for service and we were having over priced drinks we were rushed out again it was an awful experience from the way it’s always busy I know my review was not going to matter I just hope that it saves somebody else the money and the time of being treated the way we were it was a special occasion As far as the rushing us out which alone was ridiculous the fact that after you order your first drink which takes 15 minutes to get to your table and every additional drink takes the same time and the more you order the quality goes down please just expect that they are going to make it as crappy as they possibly can and still charging the same exact price I again if anybody who asks me about it I will let them know that my experience and I can only hope that I save people the same experience that we had it was ridiculous If you are looking for a dinner date or dessert maybe it’s different but if you are going out to celebrate anything of importance PLEASE. Do not go here at the the Troy location...

My husband and I went out tonight and we ended up choosing your restaurant for a special evening out, as we usually come once or twice a year, since it's a bit pricey for us. We've never had a bad experience before tonight. I am always saying how much I love your restaurant and tell people to go.

However, we just didn't feel the 'love' that we usually feel going there. We had a reservation for 7:15pm and we go there about 15-20 minutes early(we left early because it was snowing out), and they seated us right away (We weren't expecting that, but we appreciated it and was thankful that we didn't have to wait). The beginning of the evening started out good. The waiter came and took our order and within 10 minutes we had our first course (we did the 4 courses for 2: $115). Then our salads came out, and after they cleaned up our cheese and salads they brought out the skillet plate for the third course. I think we waited about 25 minutes before the meat actually came out. Once the waiter came out he apologized and said that they were low staff in the kitchen, and the main course was always the hardest to come out. We shook it off and said it wasn't a problem. Before he left we asked for refills for our drinks, and then he came back 10 minutes to check on us. I told him that we still needed our refills. He responded with "oh yeah that's right." It took him another 15 minutes to bring them out. At this point we were getting annoyed as it has now been almost 30 minutes with no drinks. While we understand that restaurants get busy, but there was people walking around and it didn't seem busy. We were also in the back corner so we thought that was part of the problem as well. After they cleaned up our 3rd course, we waited for 25 minutes and never received our chocolate. In between that time we never saw our waiter and he never came to check on us. We had to find someone to tell them we have been waiting almost 30 minutes for our chocolate. At this points it was 8:30 & we were tired, annoyed, and wanted to go home. We couldn't enjoy the end of our evening as we felt we were always just waiting. By the time we left we were there for 2 and half hours and more than half of that time was us waiting for our food. We probably saw our waiter a total of 5 times within those 2 and a half hours.

It seemed like our waiter was new and still learning. Which was fine and understandable. We know how to give grace. But we felt ignored, forgotten, and like our waiter just didnt care. When we did see him, he was awkward and would make werid comments like, "Oh, i steal a piece of the cotton candy from the sparkler and eat it, if no one wants it."

While we would come back, our night was just ruined and a fun exciting date night, turned into something that felt like "work," and focusing ourselves to stay. At one point we made the comment to ourselves that no one would even notice if we left. And that feeling felt yucky, as we know you guys can do better.

We went to your Troy, Michigan location and our waiter...