Melting Pot

305 E. 3rd Street

Austin, Tx

(512) 401-2424

13343 N Highway 183

Austin, TX

(512) 401-2424

http://www.meltingpot.com/

Being the good daughter that I am, when Mother’s Day rolled around, I tried to plan a special day to celebrate how awesome my mom is (and I’m not partial, she really is). My mom has done everything in her power to help me succeed in life. Everything from putting me through college (thanks again mom and dad), to driving me half way across America (while I had pneumonia no less) so that I could go on my grade school field from Chicago to Virginia. She always cooks me yummy dinners and had the forethought enough to make me do my own laundry when I was a teenager so I wouldn’t screw it up once I got to college. I could go on and on extolling the virtues of my mom, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear those; you want to hear about where we went for Mother’s Day. We went to, what in my opinion is now, the greatest place to celebrate Mother’s Day – The Melting Pot.

Now when I lived in Fort Worth, high end chain restaurants like The Melting Pot, Simply Fondue, Fogo de Chao (as mentioned in the previous review), etc were de rigueur. Places like that aren’t too bad, in fact they’re usually pretty tasty, but I much prefer my experiences at unique (and non-chain) Austin restaurants. But (and here comes the but), I LOVE fondue. Its one of those foods that’s fun to eat, tasty, and is a great way to spend a long meal with someone (and trust me, when you eat fondue it’s a loooong meal – but more on that in a minute). But more importantly, my mom loved fondue. When she would come to visit me in Fort Worth, we spent many an evening at one of DFW’s many fondue places enjoying a hot of melty cheese or chocolate. So when I heard Austin finally had a fondue restaurant, I immediately knew I had to take my mom there for Mother’s Day. I called up to make reservations the Tuesday before Mother’s Day thinking there wouldn’t be any reservations left. Surely everyone else, unlike my procrastinating self, would have the foresight enough to call ahead weeks in advance to make reservations. Apparently not. I had no trouble getting us a table, I was even able to get us a special table (more on that in a minute too), AND they even offered to put a vase of fresh roses on the table that Mom could take with her. And here’s the best part, because we wanted to have a late lunch, they were offering all this at a special Mother’s Day discounted rate. How cool is that!

The Melting Pot is rather conveniently (or inconveniently) located in the new Convention Center Food District. It’s on the same block as the other quality national chains that broker for Convention traffic: Roy’s, PF Changs, Fogo de Chao, and to a lesser extent Dona Emilia’s. So with all those other options, why would you choose the Melting Pot? Three words: Chocolate Cookie Fondue. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Let me describe how the Melting Pot is layed out. The inside is dark and cavern-like, but tastefully decorated as all high end small chain restaurants are these days. Lots of dark wood and silver. That makes the Melting Pot really special, however, are the individual rooms. Yes, that's right, call ahead for reservations and you too can reserve one of a dozen or so totally private tables. Each room has its own table, complete with fondue burner, and a frosted glass pocket door to separate you from other other low-brow restaurant go-ers (I mean seriously, who wants to associate with those schlubs??). I highly recommend that if you eat here, you reserve one of these rooms just for the novelty of it.

Normally, the fondue operates on a per person prix fix pricing scale. The table chooses one type of cheese fondue, chocolate fondue, and in the middle, the type of entree cooking style. The cooking style is normally oil or a flavored broth. The oil is fun because they bring out a host of batters to cover your meat in, but the broth is healthier and just as tasty (and won't leave you smelling like you just deep fried your clothes). I think they normally have some sort of beer broth, and a more flavorful broth - when we went, it was coq au vin. Mom (who got to choose) went with the coq au vin. Once the table chooses a cooking style, everyone chooses their meat plate. They offer a mixed plate of tenderloin, chicken breast, sausage, shrimp, scallops and veggies that I normally recommend to fondue beginners. But, they also offer more steak, lobster, and veggie options.

Once you have the general outline of the meal figured out, you pick fondue flavors. For the cheese fondue, we chose the "Wisconsin Trio." Having grown up an almost cheesehead, I was most delighted with that choice. The trio was a rich blend of fontina, butterkase, and surprisingly blue cheese with some garlic, wine, scallions and sherry thrown in for good measure. The coolest part about the cheese course is they make it right in front of you. Your server brings out a large tray covered in cheese, and other delectable ingredients, starts the fondue burner and mixes up the cheese while you drool at the smell. Once its warmed up and melted, they bring you bowls filled with a variety of breads, fruits and veggies to dip in the cheese. It was incredible. There's nothing better than cheese, especially if its hot and melty and on top of a crisp green apple. The dippers as we'll call them were all fresh and tasty. No dry, stale bread and drippy cheese like at Cru. This fondue's the real deal.

Once you've gorged yourself on cheese, the server brings out a scalding hot pot of your chosen broth style. When it first comes out, its covered with a clamped on lid and looks something like a medieval torture device. Stay clear of this until your server tells you its safe. You wouldn't want to be a "hot coffee" lap casualty. But once it's safe, you grab your handy color coded skewer - each person gets their own color so you know who's is who's - spear a piece of meat, and start cooking. It generally takes about 2-3 minutes for each piece to cook, so you get a rhythm going, and rotating out through your 3 skewers so you always have tasty food on your plate. Oh, they also bring 4 or 5 different sauces to dip your meat into. The yogurt Curry is the best but stay away from the sweet and sour. Its pretty gross. This was probably the weakest part of the meal. After cooking quality meat in great smelling broth, you want something interesting and savory to dip your meat into. Not just a crappy teriyaki or horseradish sauce.

Added Note: After seeing Lee's comment, it reminded me of the funniest part of the fondue experience. When you lose a bit of food in the fondue broth, you use this big slotted spoon to fish it out. Now this slotted spoon isn't called just anything, it's called the "David Hasselhoff." So we all got a good giggle when we'd lose a piece of chicken in the broth and would have to ask someone to "Pass the Hoff."

Just when you think you're so full you could hardly eat anything else, they bring out.. The chocolate. You're table has to agree upon one type of chocolate fondue, but when you have such choices as Bailey's Milk Chocolate Fondue or Smores Fondue, is anyone really a loser? My mother, in her infinite wisdom chose Chocolate Cookie Fondue. It was a rich dark chocolate swirled with marshmallow fluff with bits of Oreo cookies mixed in. It was incredible. You get a plate of the most decedent desserts to dip in said fondue. Anything from angel food cake to marshmallows to brownies to a slice of cheesecake. Yes you read that right, a slice of cheesecake. I can't think of a more perfect dessert.

The plus about a fondue meal is also the minus. All this extravagance takes about 2-3 hours to complete and really do it justice. Cooking meat in broth in is a time consuming endeavour. But if you've got the time, I suggest you try it at least once. Its fun and tasty and a great way to connect with your family.

Bottom Line: Fun to eat food that tastes great

Mariah - 9.5

Marakesh

906 Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 476-7735

Wednesday started my week of serial dating – lunch date Wednesday, 2 dates Friday, a date Saturday, a date Sunday, a date Tuesday, and then one more on Wednesday. If it weren’t for my crackberry, I’d have problems keeping up with all of them. Needless to say, I’ve been eating out a lot lately. My Tuesday lunch date was at Cosi, which I’ve already reviewed, my Thursday date was just drinks at Trudy’s (and the date went pretty horribly anyway, but that’s what I get for going on a blind date with someone who hangs out with 65 year old women). Which brings us to Friday. The first date was marathon wine drinking at my favorite wine bar, Cork & Co, with a funny and dynamic (though slightly workaholic) software engineer. The second date, however, is the focus of this review.

I met up with Bachelor #2 Friday evening at Marakesh, a little middle eastern restaurant on Congress. We were seated promptly at one of the few empty tables. The place was packed with people from all walks of life, singles, people on dates (like us), and even a few families. The place isn’t large, maybe 15-20 tables and the décor is typical Congress ave restaurant. Brick walls, worn hard wood floors and the slightly musty scent of a well aged building. The smell of the building mixed wonderfully with the smell of the middle eastern food to produce a great homey feel that made me immediately at ease. The smell made my mouth instantly water, and after 2 bottles of wine, I was starving!

I perused the menu and noticed the typical middle eastern fare: shwarma, gyros, falafel, etc. More Greek or Turkish than Moroccan, but eh, this is Texas, you can’t expect to go to a traditional Moroccan restaurant in central Texas. We ordered an appetizer and two entrees, and to be honest, I don’t remember what any of them were. Between the alcohol and the TOTALLY unremarkable middle eastern food, I seriously don’t remember what we ate. I totally don't remember the appetizer. I remember it was meaty and tasteless. I really don't remember what Bachelor #2 ordered. I think it involved chicken, but I am at a loss as to what it was. I THINK I ordered kibbeh, mostly because its usually what I like to order at new middle eastern restaurants. Its considered sort of the meatloaf of middle eastern food and you can generally gage how good a restaurant is by their kibbeh. Its kind of like in the US, if you can't cook meatloaf right, you can't cook anything right. However, Marakesh's fried bulgar/lamb was so unremarkable I don’t remember if that’s truly what I ate. It wasn’t badly prepared, rancid, or anything too offensive, but it was just boring boring food. I do remember my entree came with hummus and pilaf, and I remember enjoying both. The hummus was pretty tasty, having a sharp dill tang and the pilaf was plain but turned into a nice hummus delivery system.

The only think remarkable was the halva, the dessert we ordered, and that’s because it was remarkably bad. I’ve come to find out that the halva I had eaten before is semolina halva and more resembles a thick polenta textured pudding. But after doing some research, I’ve discovered halva can resemble anything depending on what country you’re in. In fact, it means dessert (or more specifically “sweets”) in several different languages. This halva was more (as I’ve come to find out) Egyptian style halva, which resembles a big square hunk of candy. It had a nice melt-in-your-mouth texture, but it was soooo over-sweet and the bitter taste of cardamon overpowered all the other flavors that I couldn’t take more than a couple of bites. The waitress who was a little off to begin with noticed we hadn’t eaten it and chose to tell me while I was standing in line at the bathroom that she’d taken it off the bill. You know there are times when you talk to strangers, and times you don’t, and standing in line for the bathroom is one of those times you don’t. :P

Bachelor #2 and I continued on to The Hideout for a Ladies of Comedy improve show. The Hideout is a cute little coffee shop/improve theater. A fun date for all you single people if you’re looking for interesting things to do (like you have to look that far in Austin, but hey, I thought I’d point it out). The comedy show was.. interesting.. to say the least. There were moments of sheer brilliance and moments that were less than brilliant (including the sketch where a woman gives birth to her food baby - a baby tied to a pizza - and procedes to eat it.. a little disturbing).

Bottom Line: Bland, uninteresting, just plain forgettable middle eastern food

Mariah: 5

Fino

2905 San Gabriel Street

Austin, TX 78705

(512) 474-2905

http://www.finoaustin.com/

Oh, my fellow foodies, how busy life gets sometimes. I feel bad for abandoning you these past 2 weeks to take care of the banalities of life (like school projects and work), but sometimes you have to put down the things you love in order to finish the things you don’t. But rest assured, I didn’t deny myself the only pleasure I seem to be getting these days, food (aside from the dates I had this weekend, but I don’t kiss and tell)! I happened to go to two restaurants in the last few weeks that need reviewing. I’ll start with the latest, the one new restaurant I went to last week, Fino.

Fino is actually located in an area I know really really well, at 29th and San Gabriel. When I was in college, I spent a year living in a houseful of men, at my engineering fraternity’s house, which as it happened, was nicknamed “The House” (sounds ominous, right?, well if you spent any time in that bathroom, you’d think so too). The House was an old 1930’s west campus house with bad plumbing, bad walls, bad smells, but oh was it fun place to live. The yard was surrounded in thick, tall bamboo and we used to have these incredible keggers there. Think make out rooms, 2-story beer bongs, and a huge yard to throw up in when you’d had enough. That place was made to be a party house! It was located right at the intersection of 29th and San Gabriel. We used to get all liquored up and walk across Granite Café, the local high end restaurant and pretend to spend money we didn’t have on food we never bought. But they did have a nice patio and for a college student Granite Café was about as swanky as it got.

Flash forward 8 year (yikes!!) to groovy 2008. Lee invited me out for dinner and since I knew I’d need a break from all the school work I’ve been doing I said sure. Let me tell you, if I wanted to relive my college years of pretending to eat at Granite Café I still could, because the place hasn’t changed one bit. Now don’t get me wrong, its really a nice location. Its on the second floor of a nice brick shopping center and basically takes up the whole top of the shopping center. A generous wrap around veranda with tons of outdoor seating, lovely bamboo blinds to keep the sun out, large wicker furniture, and a nice breeze wafting in from Shoal Creek, gives the restaurant has a nice tropical atmosphere. The inside (where I have to admit I’ve never spent much time), seems nice and upscale. Large picture windows bring the tropical atmosphere into the interior of the restaurant while a large bar creates an open space that is segmented by small screens for more privacy.

I sat down and immediately ordered a sangria, the house specialty. It came in a smaller glass than I was hoping, but was a really amazing drink. Little pieces of apples and oranges danced with ice cubes in the ruby liquid. The red wine was neither too sweet nor too bitter. Very tasty. At that point Lee came walking up looking like a Vietnamese Mexican (sorry bud, you’ve been spending waay too much time in San Antonio lately). But we settle and I ordered tapas, calamari and crab bourekia, and decided to get the paella (which requires 30 minutes to cook, btw). Well, technically we only ordered a crab bourekia but a few minutes later what should happen to show up but calamari. We waited a few minutes for the waitress to come back but when she didn’t we decided to dig in. I was hungry and I’ll never turn down good calamari!

The calamari was fresh and the breading was decent. Nothing too spectacular. It was fried to a perfect golden color though. There’s nothing I hate more than overfried calamari. But the sauce. Well, the “smoked paprika mojo picon” sauce was AWFUL. Bleh. I think they mixed tomato sauce with liquid smoke and served it up for us. Avoid if at all possible. By then the waitress had come back and when we pointed out that we had actually ordered the bourekia she said “My bad!” and the bourekia appeared soon after. The crab bourekia wasn’t all that great either. The phyllo was initially crisp and flaky and the lump Crab, mascarpone & roasted peppers filling tasted good but the whole package together turned out being kind of oily and lackluster.

The paella came out soon after which surprised me, I was expecting it take a lot longer to cook. But then, I was on my 3rd glass of sangria and was enjoying the company. Now, after having the less than stellar tapas, I wasn’t expecting much from the paella. Maybe it was because my guard was down, or maybe it really was that good, but the paella knocked my socks off. The octopus, calamari, and mussels (and maybe sausage but I don’t remember) were cooked perfectly in the moist saffron-tomato infused rice. It had a slightly smoky flavor and the texture of the rice was incredible. Not at all gummy like some paella’s I’ve had, and definitely not dry. Each grain of rice was plumped to Portuguese perfection. I totally glutted myself on it. And to be honest the portion was huge. It is meant for 2 people, but 3 people could easily not finish it and with appetizers it would be the perfect amount for 4 people (if you’re cheap like me).

After the incredible paella, we decided to chance dessert and ordered the lemon pot de crème. I love creamy, lemon desserts. When it comes time to order dessert, I don’t want something heavy and chocolaty; I want something light and tart. I have the mis-begotten belief that it makes my after dinner breath smell better (but I know it’s a lie). Now this lemon pot was perfectly acceptable. It was a great consistency, a nice lemon flavor, not to tart, not too sweet. But if you’re looking for an amazing lemon pot experience, Wink’s lemon cream filled sugar balls (no comments) are soo much better. What was amazing about the fino lemon pot were the Basil-Mint sugar dusted blackberries on top. Basil, mint, sugar, and blackberries are MEANT to live together in harmony in my stomach and that’s where they went. Paired with the lemon pot they were amazing, but there were only 4 of them! If the whole top were covered in those awesome blackberries I’d have given it a much better score.

Overall: Wonderful patio, awesome paella & sangria, stay away from the tapas.. please..

Mariah – 7.5 (9 if you ONLY order sangria & paella and get them to throw in the blackberries)