"Let's hold up those glasses again...!!"

Post by: Beth


Yey for birthdays! My birthday was this past Friday, and I'd wanted to do something fun and special for the occasion. As cliche as it is, I REALLY like having fondue for special occasions. It's just something different that we don't do a lot, and there's something fun about controlling what sauce you use with what type of meat, what style cooking oil you use, what kinds of spices are used, and making up fun combinations for the other one to try. So we decided Saturday night would be the night we'd go have fondue. We'd make up our minds pretty early during the week, so we had plenty of time to make reservations for the date and time we wanted... we thought. There's a fondue place right near our loft called "Simply Fondue" and I was pretty excited to try it since it was new to us and looks really pretty inside. Raja started calling on Tuesday to try to make the reservations. He called a couple of times Tuesday, but was unable to get anything but an answering machine. That's not too strange really, because there's a lot of restaurants and lounges in St. Louis that keep odd hours that are hard to figure out. Neither of us were worried. He called again Wednesday and got the answering machine several more times, so decided that must just be one of those businesses that doesn't actually answer the phone half the time. He left a message this time and we still didn't get too concerned. Thursday he tried again... relentlessly.. left another message finally and called me sounding baffled. I knew they were open, because I'd seen people eating dinner in the front of the restaurant Monday night when I'd driven by, so he drove by that night as well. No one was eating in there Thursday night, but again... some businesses here keep really strange hours and it's not unusual to see no pattern at all. Friday while I was at work, he called me and his words were: "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" I should have known better because he's used this phrase before and it ended up being ONLY bad news for me, but I went ahead and asked for the good news first. "The good news is that Simply Fondue finally called me back today." "YEY!! I'm so excited!! Did you get us a reservation?!" "The bad news is that they called me back to tell me that they can't serve us because they are closing down the restaurant. For good." As you can imagine, my face fell and the possibility of fondue for my birthday dinner seemed dismal. But Raja had looked up another fondue restaurant and said we could go there if I wanted instead. We'd gone to the "Melting Pot" once in Birmingham so it wasn't as new to us, but I was still excited about fondue so Saturday night at the "Melting Pot" it was!

The experience was great, and I was really glad in the end that we ended up going to that restaurant. The waiter was really nice, the food was so yummy, and the whole experience was just a lot of fun. We had Jamaican jerk sirloin, garlic chicken, teriyaki shrimp, filet mignon, and of course the cheese appetizer dip with apples, veggies, and bread. We also had yummy chocolate with peanut butter as our dessert fondue! Our waiter volunteered to take pictures of us constantly, which was VERY nice of him... but it was really hard not to bust out laughing each time because his phrase was always "Let's hold up those glasses again...!!!" Raja and I obliged because he was so nice and he'd really gone out of his way for us the whole night, but it made for some funny pictures of us half-heartedly posing with our glasses. ;) Here are some pictures from our birthday dinner.