Patch Blog: Dadmissions on Fondue

We took the girls to the Melting Pot this weekend. They're adventurous eaters and for a couple of years Gloria and I have talked about the possibility of taking them for fondue.

We hadn't done it sooner, because I don't need the added dinner worry of the girls getting third degree burns along with their meal. So now that they're a little older, we went.

The funny part of fondue is that it's really a kids' dream—dunk a bunch of stuff in a bunch of other stuff, make a mess, then eat it. In this case, we had the Fiesta cheese as an appetizer, and that starts with burning off beer and then mixing it in with the cheese.

Yes, this might be the first time the girls got to taste beer. They didn't really like the Fiesta cheese—go figure. Well, Alicia liked it. Andreya just liked the tortilla chips she got to dip inside. Great, now we come to a fancy restaurant so Andreya can drink her lemonade and eat tortilla chips.

Salads were next—they came with candied pine nuts. Score for the kid: The chefs found a way to add candy right on to a salad. Actually, score another one for dad as well, because I liked the salad just as much as Alicia. Andreya didn't like the salad, so she just kept eating tortilla chips. And she became a pro at dunking other people's food into the fondue cheese. She didn't want to eat it, but loved to dip it, cover it, and hide it, in a pile of cheese, then spin it around like spaghetti on a fork.

Then came the dinner—a series of raw meats dropped right in front of each person and the kids. It took me all of two seconds to tell Andreya to make sure not to touch the raw meat, when she went to touch the raw meat. It's the Murphy's Law of Dadmissions. We had a couple of cuts of meat, tuna, chicken, and a lobster tail. Andreya enjoyed the tortilla chips. Well that's not exactly true, she liked these little raviolis that came on the kids plate and tried at least one bite of one morsel before saying in her cute, little four year old voice, "I'm full mama."

Alicia, though, went at it. She is a creative and adventurous eater. She tried the chicken, beef and tuna. She snagged almost the entire lobster tail, until I had to pull a Netflix on her and throttle back her access to the meat to save some for others. 

When the meal was done, the girls had saved up room for the prize—chocolate fondue dessert. This is a scary proposition at 8 p.m.—to let the girls dig into some chocolate. But we did it. They got the Flaming Turtle, so the waiter came and lit the chocolate on fire... Because there's nothing that calms a nervous Dad's nerves more than having something lit on fire right in front of the kids.

In the end, the chocolate cooled off, the kids got their fix, and dessert ended in a sweet success. Andreya, who had enjoyed tortilla chips and ravioli, somehow found room for the chocolate.

We've already had the girls experience Dim Sum and Brazilian barbecue. In the end, our first trip to fondue land was a success. It reminded me that we can't be afraid to try new things with the girls.

And forever, or for a couple of days anyway, they'll remember that it was mom and dad who took them for this first, cool fondue experience. Score some points for the parents.

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