We’ve been recommended to to Melt and the food there is good. We’ve been to Melt in Lakewood twice and both times, the food is good, but it comes at a price. So tonight we tried Melt’s new location in Cleveland Heights (east side).
First, our issues with Melt on the west side (Lakewood): You have to plan in advance when you go to Melt. Expect a wait of at least 1.5 hours (on top of our 30 min travel time to get there). Now, Melt on the west side only has about 10 tables so they are going to be a bit busy. Understandable.
Management on the east side think this is perfectly acceptable.
Sure, the east side location just opened up 2 days before, so the wait staff may still be learning the routine (no biggie). I heard it was a much larger location, so I’m thinking the wait shouldn’t be too bad. True, the bar is much larger, the table count appears doubled, but the wait we were told was an hour to an hour and a half (we got there at 6pm on Sunday). Ok, we will wait it out at the bar. The bartender was great. She gave us the heads up that any sandwiches were going to take an hour. Perfect, we will get a snack and drinks and place our meal order at 6:30pm. We even asked before hand to make sure it was ok if we order at the bar and eat at the table.
At 6:45pm, we got our table and I took care of the bar tab, which had the drinks and food on it. Apparently, this was my mistake. I shouldn’t have checked out. In doing so, I think we pissed the waiter off since I left a nice tip for the bartender (who did a great job, I thought). We only saw him twice, once to pick up the menus and a second time to deliver the food (no checking in for water). Food came around 7:45pm.
From the time we got to our table, we had this view of our diner guests not far from us. We didn’t take the pictures. Our guests sitting next to us took it. A few minutes later, they got chewed out for taking pictures of someone being sick. Let’s back up a bit and to 7pm.
We sit at our table and the boy is hunched over. Clearly, he isn’t doing too good. Maybe he couldn’t hold his alcohol? Dunno. The girlfriend looks like she is trying to help him and sat patiently waiting for him to sober up. Up until I see her universal facial expression for “oh shit, I’m going to puke!” She pukes to the side, I think missing her lap, but hitting the table and the seat. She doesn’t even put much effort in making it a private event. It just comes gushing out.
The wait staff attends to the situation by bringing a bucket to clean the mess up and leaves the bucket behind, “just in case.” Twenty minutes later, the boy finally barfs. During the 20 minutes, our neighbors snap the picks. This is when the girl comes over to chew the picture takers out.
This is when I think, “dude, you two are BOTH sick and you’ve been camped out for at least 45 minutes making US sick. You are in an eatery! Camp out in the bathroom or go outside. Anything!”
The sick couple’s neighbors gave us the scoop. They BOTH tried to eat the Melt Challenge. This is 5lb of food and they lost. They are also idiots.
We talked to the manager. They are aware of the kitchen issues and think the west side location performance is what they are striving for. So instead of a 2 to 3 hour wait, it will be 1.5 hours. Right. The manager also said the barfing cost them $600 in business.
And because we ordered and paid at the bar, I think we were punished and got zero service from the waiter since he knew he wasn’t going to see any tip money.
The food was good. But not THAT good. The bill was $50 for 2 sandwiches, an appetizer, a beer, and 2 cocktails, and over an hour for a table, and 2 hours for food.
Sorry Melt, but that was your third chance. The food is good, but not worth the poor service, long drive, long wait, and expensive tab.