Celebrating at the Melting Pot

Over the past few weeks, I've been running ragged with four exams, four papers, one presentation, and three group projects. On top of that, I've worked 15-30 hour work weeks to make it interesting. Even when life gets crazy, you have to find time to get away from work and school to relax and lighten up.

For me, attending a sporting event is a great way to reduce stress and it's the route I usually take whether it's U-M sports or the professional Detroit sports teams in the area. With one project and exam remaining, my friends and I decided to go out to a nice dinner to take a break from finals and celebrate Christmas a little early. With money as tight as it is, we had decided to go out to dinner instead of giving each other gifts. When my parents learned of this, they offered to treat us to dinner. The catch was we needed to pick a nice restaurant. While Pizza House is usually our nice restaurant of choice, we had the opportunity to go "big" and so Megan, Christina, and I decided to check out the new restaurant on Main Street - the Melting Pot.

I'm sure many of you have heard of this fondue restaurant as it has locations across the country. While I had heard good things about it, I had never been able to afford actually going there to eat. However with my parents' treating, we got a chance to experience fondue done right. The four course meal was fabulous and definitely a great reward for making it through a tough semester. We started off with a cheddar cheese appetizer that we could dip apples, veggies, and bread into before going onto our salad. For the main course, we had this wine-based sauce with mushrooms that we dipped duck, teriyaki sirloin, chicken, potstickers, and pork into. The dessert was my favorite part as we got chocolate with a marshmallow melted right into it with graham crackers sprinkled over it. Then we were able to dip an assortment of treats into the chocolate, which tasted like heaven. These treats included rice krispie treats, marshmallows, strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, pound cake, and brownies.


Christina, Megan, & I enjoy dinner at the Melting Pot!

While I do enjoy the challenge of finals (to an extent), by the end of it you are just mentally and sometimes physically exhausted so it's always fun to do something relaxing with your best friends and forget about school for a little bit.

What I love about Ann Arbor is the wide assortment of restaurants you can find in the area. Students can go to the basic places like Jimmy John's, Cosi, Noodles & Co., Pizza Hut, Panda Express, Wendy's, and more. There are also some more unique restaurants to the area that can make for a great lunch or dinner out with friends like the previously mentioned Pizza House, Red Hawk Bar & Grill, The Brown Jug, and Good Time Charley's. And if students really want to splurge (or their parents are in town and can pay), I'd recommend restaurants like the Melting Pot on Main Street, Eve in Kerrytown, and the Gandy Dancer on Depot Street.

You can find pretty much any kind of food you could want in the area. While it might not be right on campus, all of these great restaurants are within a short drive or a long walk (depending on where you live). In my Communication Studies 439 class (Global Media & Press Freedom), we needed to bring in food from the country we had been writing about in our media journals all semester. I had been reading The Moscow Times, a Russian paper written in English, all semester so I needed to find some sort of Russian food to bring in. I thought it was going to be pretty challenging to find some authentic Russian food, but after a quick Google search I learned of Euro Mart. It's a small little place on Packard St. that provides authentic Russian, Ukranian, and Lithuanian food. The guy working there when I stopped by suggested this Russian golden chocolate cake called ptitchie moloko, which I ended up purchasing. It wasn't like our typical chocolate cake with icing, but it was certainly a delight and I was impressed that I could find such authentic food from Russia just ten minutes from my apartment!

As I said in my last post, please feel free to e-mail me with any questions at cjhammon@umich.edu you may have about the student experience at the University of Michigan!