What was The Melting Pot Scottsdale?
The Melting Pot Scottsdale was the fondue restaurant at Mercado del Lago, the lakeside shopping center at Hayden Road and Via de Ventura in McCormick Ranch. Phoenix New Times gave its address as 8320 N Hayden Road when it reviewed the restaurant on October 30, 1997, as one of two chains that had recently forged Scottsdale links, and it stayed for more than 22 years, closing on September 29, 2019.
It was a franchise of The Melting Pot, the chain that opened its first restaurant in Maitland, Florida, in 1975 and in 1997 had more than 40 outlets, mostly in the Southeast. New Times critic Howard Seftel paired it with Earls, the Canadian chain that had just opened on Pima Road, as evidence that Scottsdale’s roaring growth and sensational demographics had caught the eye of higher-end chain executives.
What it sold was not so much a menu as an evening. Dinner came in courses around a pot set into the table: a salad, a cheese fondue mixed tableside, a platter of raw meats and vegetables to cook yourself, and chocolate fondue to finish. Seftel’s opening line has outlived the restaurant: the calendar said 1997, he wrote, but at the Melting Pot the clock stopped in 1975, and the way to prepare was a KC and the Sunshine Band eight-track and a leisure suit. He also conceded that the chain had the fondue ritual down to a science.
For two decades it was McCormick Ranch’s special-occasion room, and when it closed, KTAR’s readers remembered first dates and anniversaries. Our verdict: The Melting Pot was a chain, and an unapologetically retro one, but it filled a role no independent restaurant in the neighborhood has taken on since, a dinner that was the whole night out.
What the fondue night was
Come hungry and stay two hours. Seftel’s advice in 1997 was to order the combination fondue for two, which gave a taste of almost everything except dessert, fed three, and took about two hours of swishing. Meals began with salad, and both were better than they had to be: a chef’s salad with ham, hard-boiled egg and Emmenthal under a creamy house dressing, and a mushroom salad with alfalfa sprouts.
Order the traditional cheese. The server set the pot on the table’s built-in heating element and built the fondue in front of you: white wine first, then garlic and a squeeze of lemon, then shredded Gruyère and Emmenthal, a splash of kirschwasser and a touch of nutmeg, stirred until thick. Color-coded forks kept diners from stabbing each other’s bread, and pumpernickel, rye and French bread, vegetables and sliced apples were the dippers. The alternative, the fiesta fondue, used beer and Cheddar with salsa and jalapeños; if the Swiss made nachos, Seftel wrote, this is what they would taste like.
Cook in the oil. The entrée platter was a jaw-dropping spread of raw chicken, fish, filet mignon, shrimp, teriyaki steak, mushroom, potato, broccoli, squash and carrot, cooked at the table either in bubbling oil or in a seasoned court-bouillon. The critic preferred the oil, which was faster and tastier; in the broth, one small piece of chicken took three minutes. Dipping sauces included curried yogurt, green goddess, creamy horseradish and ginger-plum.
Finish with fire. The chocolate course was the reason many people came. The flaming turtle combined chocolate, pecans and caramel, flamed tableside with rum, with strawberries, pineapple, bananas, marshmallows, pound cake and cheesecake to dip. Yin and yang set pools of white and dark chocolate side by side.
Budget and book. Dinner for two could run $50 and up in 1997. Hours then were dinner only, 5 to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until midnight Friday and Saturday. In its later years it was a reservation for birthdays and anniversaries, and the lake behind Mercado del Lago, with Butters Pancakes & Café as the center’s morning anchor, made a walk before or after part of the night.
A 1975 idea that lasted 22 years on Hayden Road
The Melting Pot came to Scottsdale on the wave of chains that the 1990s brought to the city’s growing middle. Seftel’s 1997 column was titled Chains Addiction and opened with Rousseau: man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains, especially in Scottsdale. The question he posed was whether out-of-state brands could earn repeat business at $50 a couple. The Melting Pot answered it for two decades by offering something unusual, fondue as an event, in a neighborhood center surrounded by McCormick Ranch’s lakes, golf and family housing.
The closing was not about customers. In August 2019 the restaurant announced on Facebook that it was unable to secure a mutually beneficial lease extension with the current landlord of its Scottsdale location, and that it would close indefinitely as of Monday, September 30; ABC15 reported the last day of service as September 29, 2019. The post called it strictly a carefully planned and weighed business decision. Employees were offered work at the Ahwatukee and Glendale restaurants, and the Melting Pot Restaurants of Arizona said they were searching for a new home for a third location. KTAR, reporting on August 20, 2019, noted the reaction from customers and former employees who had celebrated first dates and anniversaries there. New Times recorded the closing in its September roundup, after more than 22 years in the strip mall at Via de Ventura and Hayden.
The chain carried on elsewhere, with 95 franchised restaurants by 2026, according to Wikipedia. Mercado del Lago changed around it: after Z’Tejas closed its Arizona restaurants in 2025, Vecina, the Arcadia Latin restaurant, opened its second location in that lakeside building in September 2026. What the record does not say is what moved into the Melting Pot’s own space, whether the Arizona owners ever found their third site, or exactly which month in 1997 the restaurant opened.
Honest assessment: The Melting Pot was easy to mock and hard to replace. Critics treated it as a time capsule, and the fondue was never the point; the point was a long, interactive, mildly ridiculous dinner that made an occasion feel like one. That it lasted 22 years on Hayden Road and closed, by its owners’ account, over a lease rather than a lack of diners suggests the neighborhood never stopped wanting it. It belongs alongside Z’Tejas, its former neighbor in the center, in the record of McCormick Ranch’s lost suburban dining rooms.