Every month anniversary, my husband and I go have a nice dinner at some new place. So last month we decided to go to this new fondue place we heard of at a Naperville wine festival.
As we entered, I was quite impressed with the smoky chocolate fragrance, romantic ambiance, the crowd and the extensive wine list they carried.
After being seated in our booth our waiter, Matt, helped us pick our starters and we waited in expectant delight. Neither of us had had fondue other than for snacks and desserts and did not really know what to expect in a fondue meal.
First course, starters went really well, cheese fondue with veggies, fruits and assorted bread were delicious. This really raised our expectations for the main meal and we ordered an assortment of meat and sea food. As for the seasoned oils, we decided to let out waiter pick us a good choice.
Now if you haven't tried fondue before, here is the basic idea. If you are having cheese fondue, you are given things like asparagus or carrots or apples and a pot of your choice of cheese which is placed on the special fondue burner on the table. All you have to do is, spear the veggie of your choice with the fondue fork and dip it in the cheese, wait till it is covered in cheese and eat it! The chocolate fondue is a more popular option where you dip things like rice crispies or marshmallows into molten chocolate. These are the only fondues I've tried and have never seen a main course fondue.
So when they placed raw bits of meat in front of us and oils in the fondue pot and a variety of sauces to dip into, I was a bit nervous. The meat literally had blood oozing out from it!!! I am quite squeamish about eating meat in the first place, and was not at all a fan of the thing sitting in front of me which probably thirty minutes back was walking on four legs!!
Shutting my mental processing off and hoping for the best, I dipped a piece of meat into the boiling oil and turned it around for the required ten minutes.
When I took it out, it was more of the edible meat colour, but the consistency wasn't appealing at all!
Fondue I had come to eat, and fondue I did eat. This is the part where I should tell- Lo behold! It was nice, not at all how you expect it to taste. But I will not, mainly because it felt like cow not like beef!! it was utterly gross and I think it even moved in my mouth!!! since I was hungry and did not have any other option eat my cow I did! I put all of the meat in there for double the time they asked you to and covered it in so much sauce that no one would have known it to be meat! That was the only way I could force it down. My husband, more used to high dining and found of fine rare meat, just could not understand my predicament and kept asking me to chew it better to 'enjoy' the meat!
Stumbling and crawling through the main course, it was a relief to finally get to the dessert fondue part “The perfect balance of Godiva White Chocolate, Stoli Vanil Vodka, Crème de Cacao, and Ice Cream topped with chocolate shavings to give you peace of mind” which was rather delicious, maybe even the best dessert I have had. But anything would have been nice after raw meat!
After all the high expectations and hopes of a good meal on our month anniversary, I ended up cooking and had to eat food that made me miss my cooking, and that is saying something!
