http://www.lafondue.com/
So today Alicia and I celebrated 11 years of putting up with each other and decided to walk to La Fondue in Saratoga to celebrate the occasion. This restaurant is actually owned by our landlords however fear not, I shall give an objective review as I always do. (As objective as a persons opinion can be!). We had a 7pm reservation and showed up on time to be seated. The restaurant has an eccentric decor and it seemed to change from the lobby (lions heads and pop art photography) to the area where we were seated (religous art). We ordered the "Feast for two". This involved salads, cheese fondue, 6 different proteins for the main course, and chocolate fondue.
The salads came out while the cheese fondue was heating up. I had a few problems with the salad. It comes deconstructed on the plate but the plate is packed to where you can't mix the salad without having it fall out. You have to eat the salad a little at a time and then mix it a little at a time. You have a choice of chef or spinach salad. We both got the spinach salad. My carrots and cucumbers were fresh but tasted watery. I don't know if that is from them being rinsed quick and then shredded and cut while not properly dried. Anyway, the salad is also just too big to come with all the other food that is part of the "feast". I would skip the salad if I went again.
For the cheese fondue we ordered the Cajun, which consists of cheddar, beer, shrimp and spices. Our server added fresh garlic to it and what looked like salsa. This gave the fondue a nice punch to it and it went well with the bread cubes and fruits and vegetables that came with it. The only weird thing was at the end you have all the little shrimp piled up at the bottom of the fondue. I don't know why they are in there you just eat them at the end I guess. This was a nice start to the meal thought and we both enjoyed it very much.
For the next part of the feast you got to pick 6 different proteins from quite a large selection, including exotic meats like kanagroo and crocodile. For our six we chose: wild boar filet, buffalo filet, pacific shrimp, free range chicken, pacific catch (tuna), and scallops. You get to pick your cooking method and we chose the electric grill. The proteins come with a mix of vegetables and 6 different dipping sauces. So if the restaurant isn't cooking for you that what can you judge them on? Mainly the service and the quality of the products given to you. All the proteins were nicely cut and looked fresh. I smelled the tuna, scallops and shrimp closely and was impressed. There wasn't a hint of a fishy odor or the product slipping past its prime. All the seafood proteins tasted excellent and there was a dipping sauce to go with whatever your tastes, although a few were a little sweet. The tuna was such nice pieces that we just seared the outside of them and ate them mostly without the dipping sauce. The same could be said for the scallops. The shrimp however did taste good dipped in the "mango chutney" sauce. The buffalo fillet strips were very good as well and there was a chipotle type BBQ sauce that seemed to be made for these. There also was a sour cream and chive sauce that Alicia liked for that as well. The wild boar fillet was excellent and honestly better than most pieces of pork you get at a restaurant. I could have eaten a lot of that. The chicken was good as well but was out shined by all the other great proteins we had. I should say it is also kind of fun to cook your own food like that. It's a novel experience that you don't usually get when you eat out.
For dessert we had the "Choctastic" fondue which was dark chocolate, hazelnut, and marscapone cheese. It came with an assortment of things to dip in it, from fruit pieces to chocolate cookie dough and pound cake. If you like sweets you won't be disappointed here. Alicia and I agreed that the orange slices tasted best dipped in this chocolate. The one small issue was the cream puffs that came with the fondue were still frozen hard on the inside.
The service was very good. Our waters were constantly filled and plates were removed as soon as they were empty. The food takes a little longer than a typical restaurant because you have to wait for the cheese fondue to melt, the grill to heat up for your proteins, and the chocolate fondue to melt before you can eat each course. This isn't the place to go for a power lunch or quick bite. We spent almost two and half hours at our table. You need all that time for the amount of food you get. This is another reason why I should have ate half of the salad (Alicia was smart and did just that) . Our server asked if we were celebrating something special for the meal. We mentioned it was our anniversary and out with desert came complimentary glasses of champagne.
I would definitely recommend giving La Fondue a try. I think the fact that you can try so many different proteins in one sitting is worth it alone. It's a unique dining experience and maybe somewhat novel but go try it and decide for yourself. I would also like to thank our landlords Mitch & Tracy because when the bill came out it was "comped" by them so we just left a tip for our server and tried to walk off as much of the food as we could on the way home.