You're ready for a night out, just the two of you.
You decide on the Melting Pot, where the lights are dim and everyone seems to look good in the soft glow.
Cozy booths make cuddling next to each other possible. But you opt for seats across from each other, a steaming fondue pot between you, your feet touching under the table.
"Is this a special occasion?" the waitress asks.
Well, kinda, you say, you're celebrating being in love and together.
She smiles. And then goes through the fondue drill.
You know, how to order, what the side dishes are, how to cook (because, of course, you'll be cooking your own dinner — it adds to the communion of two people in love).
You settle on the "Signature Selection" ($49 for two), a three-courser — a cheese fondue appetizer, a salad and an entree.
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The salads first. You dig into the mushroom salad overflowing with thinly sliced fresh garden mushrooms, a minimal amount of greens, and topped with an Italian dressing cut with Parmesan cheese. You are pleased.
The love of your life goes with the California salad, which is loaded with baby greens, topped with sweet Roma tomatoes and crunchy walnuts, and sprinkled with creamy, pungent Gorgonzola. You're offered a bite, and find the raspberry black walnut dressing too sweet, but love the cheese and walnut action going on. On another visit you had tried a featured salad, greens with Mandarin oranges and a soy-based dressing. That, too, was excessively sweet. But the greens were fresh both times.
As for your cheese fondue course, you go with the traditional, though you took a liking to the Cheddar cheese fondue sampled another time. It was a happy mix of almost-sharp Cheddar and Emmenthaler.
The waitress whips up the traditional fondue, with Grùyere and Emmenthaler, right there at the table. She pours in the cheese, stirs in the white wine, piles on the fresh garlic, squeezes the lemon, sprinkles nutmeg and fresh pepper, and finishes off with a shot of Kirschwasser.
You take your long, thin fondue fork, stab a piece of slightly dried out rye bread, and swirl it around in the cheese. As you pull it out, strings of cheese keep you connected to the pot. When you maneuver them loose, they cling to your chin. Your love leans over to lightly kiss them off your face. You dip again and repeat the process, longing for the cheese to cling and your love to once again come to your rescue. It does; your love does.
When it's empty, the waitress cruises by and replaces that cheese pot with one full of a vegetable broth. She turns up the heat and throws in minced garlic, lots of it. And pepper. And a small carafe of burgundy. This is the coq au vin you'll cook your food in. When you were at Melting Pot another time, you had tried it with just the vegetable broth, but you wanted something a little spicier, more sophisticated this time.
She throws in lots of whole mushrooms, florets of broccoli and chunks of red potatoes. "They'll take a little longer to cook," she explains.
Then she puts a large platter between you and next to the by-now steaming liquid. The platter's full of chunks of tenderloin, boneless chicken breast, medium shrimp, sirloin made tender and tasty by a marination in teriyaki sauce, and chunks of white fish. All raw, of course.
She quickly explains the timing of the cooking — the chicken takes longer, as does the meat.
Then she leaves you alone. You take your fondue fork — your's has a red handle, your love's black, so you can tell them apart. You spear the tenderloin with one fork, a chunk of chicken with the other. Your love does the same. The forks become entangled together as they languish in the hot liquid.
When the meats are done, you dip the chicken in the plum sauce, the tenderloin in the sinus-clearing horseradish. You love the variety of dipping sauces.
Dining is a drawn-out process. You're forced to eat slowly, which is a good thing; you're not anxious for the evening to end.
Then dessert. You shouldn't, but you must. The chocolate fondue ($14 for a small) calls. You ask for a mix of dark and milk chocolate, even though it's not on the menu. The waitress says "no problem."
She puts it on the hot spot on the table, along with a plate of banana slices, strawberries, cheese cake (which turned out to be frozen), brownies, marshmallows — a whole slew of things to dip into the melted chocolate, or to spoon over it (the brownies can fall apart if they are dipped, the waitress warns you).
This, too, is eaten slowly. You lean over the table and feed the strawberries dripping with chocolate to your love. And the pineapple. And the pound cake, which was tasteless but took to the chocolate very well.
A little under two hours have passed. You realize, when you get in the car, that your hair and clothes carry the aroma of the seasonings thrown into the fondue. You don't care. You're ready for a slow ride home, memories of a evening well spent dancing in your head.
Review
Melting Pot, 7401 N. La Cholla Blvd., on the west side of the Foothills Mall, 575-6358
• Hours: 4:30-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 4:30-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
• Family call: The kids will love it, but it might cramp a romantic style.
• Noise level: Low conversations are possible.
• Vegetarian choices: A few, including "The Vegetarian" ($17), an all-veggie and cheese platter for the fondue pot.
• Dress: Casual to dressy.
• Reservations: Recommended.
• Price range: Individual entrees start at $16 and go to $27.
• Wine list: A nice-sized, reasonably priced list with primarily domestic choices, with a few European and Australian wines thrown in.