Review: Urban Fondue

To understand what type of restaurant this is, you first have to understand what type of place NW 23rd & 21st is. The area is often referred to as "Trendy 23rd", and rightly so. The streets are lined with some of the trendiest shops in town, wannabe fancy overpriced restaurants, tons of coffee shops, and all sorts of nick-knack stores. Only tourists really come to this area for an retail intentions. For locals this has become the place to be and to be seen. People cruise by in fancy cars on weekend afternoons, motorcycle groups gather in large numbers to pose, girl groups parade up/down under the premise of "shopping", and people sit in outdoor café's to people watch. And with the lack of parking, it's become a traffic nightmare. According to census records one of the highest residential densities in Oregon occurs near 23rd. And with all those people there is only limited curb parking throughout all the cross streets. It's nearly impossible to find a parking spot without stocking shoppers that appear to be returning to their cars to leave. For these reasons I avoid this area like the plague. However last Friday night was one of our friend's birthday's, and she chose Urban Fondue as the dinner location. We headed out a little early so we had some time to look for parking. After combing every street within a 1-mile radius I was so frustrated I almost just left to go elsewhere. However we found a very small parking garage a couple blocks away. The garage likely had enough spots for 15 cars at the most, but they had a couple spots left so we took one. As we were about to pay for parking a lady who was pulling out offered to give us her old parking ticket. It saved us $4, but more importantly it helped give me a better impression of the people who inhabit this area. It was a nice gesture. We hoofed it two blocks to the restaurant and were extremely surprised to find that mostly everyone was there on time. We were however a little perturbed when we found that it had been decided that we were all going in on a $25 per person pre-packaged meal. While that may have been a good value for the food, I had only planned on getting a small appetizer and then getting some real food later on. We didn't want to ruffle any feathers so we went along with it. After dealing with the aggravation of parking I really needed a good stiff drink. I found their drink menu and ruffled through it. I was amused to find that almost the entire list of drinks were all martini variations, cleverly so as the adjacent bar was Bartini. The rest of the drink menu comprised of various wines & champagnes (how trendy is that?), and 3 beers (hefeweizen a seasonal micro, and Coors light). I just started things off with a good old whiskey sour, and ordered a hefeweizen (as I knew it would take forever for her to come back for round #2, and it would take them forever to find the beer, as it's likely not something they serve very often). As expected the waitress forgot to bring my hefeweizen three times, each time we razed her about it. Finally she remembered and brought it out, upon which I immediately ordered a second. Stating that I would be finished with the first by the time she got around to bringing the second. That time she got on the ball and brought it right out, likely only because I challenged her. Soon after they brought out the food. The appetizer was garlic & olive bread with three separate fondue cheeses (sharp cheddar, swiss, and ??). All pretty good, and once we finished our bread they brought out more until all the cheese was gone. I was pretty impressed with that. The main course was a tray of various meats: lobster, prawn, scallop, salmon, sausage, beef, chicken, and pork. They brought out pots of broth in which we would individually cook our own meats, and little hour glass timers so we could tell when they were cooked. While this was mildly entertaining I really had a problem with slow boiling my own food. As we joked, for $20 more bucks I could really slum it up and do my own dishes. It would have been a lot better for the foods to have been precooked and different cheese or other alternative fondue sauces to be present for dipping. All the cooking took so long (3 minutes for each piece of meat) that we didn't even eat it all. I was pretty disappointed. For desert they brought out pots of chocolate for dipping and a plate of cookie dough, cheese cake, brownie, and various fresh fruits. Even though I don't eat a lot of sweets, I did try a few pieces of cookie dough. It was pretty good. In the end it wasn't a horrible experience. What food we did have was good and the $25 per person charge wasn't too bad for the value of the meal you get. I would have liked to see more variations though. Maybe a few different types of bead, and some more sauces for the meat. There wasn't much to dip the meats in once cooked. We ended up eating most of it raw. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, if you are in the mood for fondue I would go to Gustav's or the Rheinlander instead. You'll get a lot more food for your money, and they have more the three beers to choose from.