The Melting Pot and My Birthday

This is not a review. I want to talk about my birthday. It was yesterday, September 29th and I turned 20something years old. We started planning a dinner about a week and a half ago and invited some awesome friends and I insisted we do Fondue.

See, my first Fondue experience was...well it sucked. I drove two hours to see a guy I didn't like very much then I had to pretend I liked him and it was painful, then we went to the Fondue place and he informed me I had to pay and I said "I'm broke" and he said "Oh well" and then ordered $90 worth of food. So...I didn't get to eat for the rest of that week. Not knowing about my Crohn's I also had to suffer the worst stomach ache of all time on the two hour drive back to my apartment.

So, I expressed to my loving husband that I want to have a fun Fondue time. Sharp sticks, molten cheese, chocolate covered everything, I mean, how could that NOT be awesome?

So we made reservations for up to 14 people (then like, 8 people couldn't come so we ended up with a tidy party of 6) at The Melting Pot in Towson.

This place is gorgeous and immaculate. Our waitress was SO AMAZING. She was informative, she told us about everything, explained it all so well and kept us blissfully happy. We had two kinds of cheese on our table the Wisconsin flavor and the French flavor and both were delicious. We got two kinds of cooking broths, Coq au Vin and Mojo and those were delicious and we had two kinds of chocolate Turtle and S'More and THOSE were delicious.

When we arrived there were balloons on the table and a little gift and card signed by the staff. It was beautiful.

I was thrilled to pieces with the whole event and if I were rating this place It would get well over 5 noms.

I do recommend that you, my lovely readers, go here for special events. They go above and beyond making everything perfect for you.

Gorgeous.

Field House

Another tavern another review. After a long day of work and house-hunting we ended up at the Field House armed with a restaurant.com certificate. Since it was a Monday night, the place wasn't busy whatsoever. We ordered cokes and began looking over the menu.

The directions weren't very clear on the certificate so I'll tell you what we learned over about a half hour of menu-staring: You must spend $50 OR purchase two entrees and the cheapest entree is $18 so you're probably better off just accumulating a table full of crap.

Some apps are half off. Some are not. The ones that are, aren't very good. (Monday night happy hour special)

Burgers are half off and delicious. (Monday night happy hour special)

We ended up ordering the crab cake platter for moi, and Dave got the Field House Burger with swiss and bacon on it. Then we ordered mozz sticks, texas corn dogs, and blackberry bbq wings.

Here's a rundown of how everything tasted:

Dave's burger was amazingly good. His fries were also delicious.

The mozz sticks were chewy old and gross

Texas corn dogs were greasy, but good. I'm not sure where the "corn" part of the dog came in since they were just crispy deepfried, similar to a piece of fried fish, but the dipping sauce was mostly horseradish so if you like that kind of thing go for it.

The blackberry wings were interesting and perfect. The sauce was tangy and sweet, wings meaty and juicy.

Crabcake was mostly crab, just the way you want it. It was properly cooked, tasted great and was filling as hell. However, I hate sweet potatoes. I thought I would like deep fried sweet potatoes (it came with sweet potato fries and rather than sub out I decided to give them a shot), but no, I still hate sweet potatoes. Vile, disgusting dirt food. Blech. However, if you LIKE sweet potatoes, you will LOVE these fries. They were perfectly fried and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Now that we got the pesky food part out of the way, let's talk about service.

It was our waitress's first night on the job and apparently she had the entire restaurant to take care of. Where the rest of the waitresses were, we had no idea. We only saw one other girl, when she brought out Dave's burger immediately after we got our apps and then he scolded her and she took the burger back. So, now on her first day she had like, 6 tables of people so her attention was divided which explains why we were there for an hour and a half. We were indecisive and took a long time to order. We had like, a thousand questions about the happy hour specials, and the certificate and the food, and she was helpful and informative the whole time. She was incredibly nice and did a great job.

Manager of Field House: never put new girl on the floor by herself. It causes customers to wait 20 minutes to get refills, put in orders and get ketchup (which I'm still waiting for by the way)

The most hilarious part of the evening was when she asked Dave if he wanted another Coke and he said "Yes" and then she asked me if I needed anything and I said "Can I get a lemon?" and she said "sure" and then came back with a coke with a lemon wedge stuck to it. I just stared it, then took the lemon wedge off and squeezed it onto my crab cakes.

Overall, we give you 3 noms.

Luckie's Fabulous Tavern

Oh Luckie's...

Located just a few blocks from our house under the giant Power Plant Live sign, Luckie's features an expansive bar, huge area of outdoor seating and no toilet paper.

Seriously. The first thing I did was hit the restroom when we got here. Ladies, you know how when you walk into a restroom and you first check to make sure that there isn't anything disgusting looming in the bowl, then you check to make sure the door will shut, then you check to make sure it's not covered in pee...etc?...well, I walked down four or five stalls before finding one that didn't have human soup but still had interesting reading material on the walls (it's a bar, you can't expect much) and then to my dismay found no toilet paper. Running down several more stalls finally locating some, I washed my hands thoroughly and then laughed and the silverware setting sitting on a chair by the paper towels.

Dave had already ordered our Cokes, and we looked over the menu. We were just minutes into the dinner menu and were relieved to find out we could use our Groupon. We made up about half of their business at 5 p.m. yesterday. TV's blared the Navy v. Terps game and we set about ordering a chicken sandwich with cheddar cheese, side salads with ranch and Dave took the plunge on the hot turkey platter.

The waiter walked away with our menus and we looked forlornly at our empty glasses.

Our busy waiter set about fetching beverage for all the other patrons in the bar and as the minutes went by the annoyed tweets mounted. Had this guy not been so nice, I probably would have snapped. However, every time we interacted with him he was just so nice. By this point I was fully expecting burnt/or undercooked food, sucking ice to stay hydrated, and possibly contracting an infection from whatever was gluing my flip flops to the floor.

Here's where restaurant reviewing gets tricky. We can't rate this place the same way we would rate a place like La Tavola, or Prime. We have to rate this place on the level of other pub/bar type places. We expect simple pub style menus, we expect casual service, and we expect a certain amount of "eeeew, what is that on the floor?" It's a bar.

For being a bar, this place was pretty clean. It was sparsely staffed and likewise sparsely populated. Apparently not a lot of people eat at 5 p.m. when there's a big game going on in town. Meh.

So, finally after several tweets two full glasses of Coke show up and I was like "Yay! Thank you!" and he said "I read your mind" and then I muttered "you're apparently on mountain time" and then I wasn't mad anymore.

When the food arrived, the waiter brought over two more full glasses so he totally redeemed himself.

The food arrived. The salads looked wonderful. They were fresh, crisp and very very good. My sandwich was wonderful. Juicy chicken, fresh toppings, crisp fries. I would have been willing to eat my hat if I were the type of person to wear hats. Then the greatest shocker. . .

The hot turkey platter was delicious.

Seriously. It was Michigan good. Chunks of turkey breast, plain jane slices of bread, soaked in gravy, mounds of mashed potatoes. Stunning.

For the turkey platter alone, Luckie's you get 4 noms.

Martha and Mary's

Armed with another Groupon, we set out from Towson (did you know that AMC theaters has $5 movies if you get moving before noon? How awesome is that?) to hit up Martha and Mary's Bistro.

Pulling into the parking lot we saw a newly built restaurant complete with umbrella-ed outdoor seating. There were quite a few customers enjoying the fabulous weather outdoors munching away happily on fries, salads and sandwiches. Hopeful, we walked in.

To a disaster.

The huge LCD tv screens meant for their menu was frozen, locked on breakfast at 1:30 in the afternoon. Kids were screaming and stampeding about. The tables were jam-packed with families and we stood there hopelessly looking for any sort of lunch related menu. Finally we spotted a stack up by the cash register. We spent a few minutes looking over an expansive menu (they have everything from fried clams to pizza and sandwiches, soups, salads and tons of delicious looking desserts). Then we stepped up to the register to order.

After about 10 minutes of standing there one of the teenagers came up to take our order. Presenting her with two Groupons, we needed to divide our check. We placed our order and she asked for assistance from the manager on inputting everything to allow us the use of both Groupons. She was pleasant and friendly the whole time. We paid, she stood there. We asked for cups, she gave them to us. We got our drinks and I pointed out the obvious problem of "How will they know what food is ours and how will we know what food is ours?" So we asked, she handed us a table marker with "66" on it and the manager quipped "You're number one!". We immediately took sanctuary outside, away from all the tiny people.

Once we were in a calmer, quieter environment we started to remark on the place. It was clean (plus) the food looked really good (plus plus) the staff was friendly (plus plus plus). We also noticed that this place was in total chaos. I have to ask, how long has Martha and Mary's been open? It appeared they were on day 2 and the staff was in total disarray (also completely staffed by what appeared to be 14 year-olds except for the manager and some cooks). It did not appear that anyone really knew what they were supposed to be doing, and then add to that that the place was packed. Really packed. (In fact, we waited until after we ate and it had thinned out a little to take the pictures)

Despite all of this, our food came out very quickly and was hot and delicious. The menu is simple so you won't find elegant elaborate meals here, but it's all really good. It's inexpensive (which is probably the appeal to all of those families we saw) and it's fun. Decorated in bright colors and kid friendly-chalk menu, you can see the appeal to people with kids.

My cheeseburger sliders were wonderful. Topped with american cheese, grilled onions, pickles and ketchup and mustard on a toasted bun, the flavors went really well together. Dave got the Chicken Caesar wrap and an order of fried clams with fries. The clams were fabulous (not chewy but tender and crispy) and his wrap was excellent. Crisp lettuce, juicy chicken and tangy dressing.

I do recommend trying this place out. The menu is really good, the food is good, the staff is nice. However, go at a time where you won't be interfering with family lunch time. Like, 2:30 -4 in the afternoon. Or any day where school is happening and the kids will be there. Unless you have kids, then by all means go at any time and enjoy.

3 Noms

Dave's 2 Cents:

Infested with children, this place is. Did I step into Chuck E. Cheese by accident? Nope, no pool of plastic balls. Were the patrons annoying? yes. Was the front of the house staffed by just-turned teenagers? YES. Is the food good though? Hells Yes!

After selling over 1000++ groupons a few weeks ago, I am sure this place has been inundated with new customers and swarms of penny pinchers. With that being said, this is the only negative. The food was Fast, hot, delicious. I got a Fried Clam appetizer, piping hot, not chewy at all (chewy=freezer burn). I also ordered a Chicken Caeser wrap, which was very nicely seasoned, and not too much dressing.

All in all, this place really is great. We will be retuning again for Breakfast. Evidently this place has signature breakfast pizzas that bring people from all over. NOM NOM!!!