Melt bar and grill open

While I did not get inside Melt’s CP kitchen, I saw it from the inside of the Main Kitchen during my September visit. I was surprised at how small it is. It is just a walled off corner of the Main Kitchen. Seems like it would be more efficient to knock down the wall and just operate as part of the Main Kitchen.

I’ve been to Tom-Chee in Richardson TX. Very unimpressed. They don’t use excessive amounts of bread like Melt, but, they don’t put much in the sandwich either.

To say that food services has changed since the 1970s when you were with United is an understatement. The fact that CF can’t keep up with industry norms is is a sad statement on its corporate culture.

Looking at the Cedar Fair jobnet, it seems like the park is looking for a new full-time in park food and beverage director. Perhaps things will be improving.

https://g.co/kgs/S6DqeP

Pete, that’s good news. My weekend is better already.

I glanced at those job openings . What is a “Bulber”?

A bulber is the people who go around and change the lights in the shops on the midway and on the signs. Thats at least what i have been told.

Anyone think there's a chance Melt will be included as an all-season dining meal plan option this year?

I think it will be. The reason it likely wasn't on the plan last year was because Melt was kind of a last minute addition and they already had the meal plans worked out by then. This will be my first season with the meal plan, so that would add some value for me. It would be even better if I could use my Big Cheese Club card there.

Until the food service at Melt has vastly improved (and is consistent), adding it to the dining plan sounds like a terrible idea (as much as I love new options).

I went to Melt 4-5 times last year, and my conclusion was that the interior was really well done (lots of interesting Cedar Point signs & memories), and it worked just fine as a bar to grab a drink.

I gave them a pass after being open a week or two and serving cold appetizers after a very long wait. But I gave up on Melt as a sit-down restaurant after an awful experience with some new friends a couple of months into the season.

There were 5 of us, and just a handful of other tables on a slow park day. It took forever to get acknowledged, and finally, a nice manager/supervisor came over and apologized for being very short-staffed. She was our server (and the only one I saw in the place). She took our drink and food orders, and we waited about an hour for the food. Without us saying anything, she came over and said she was putting in a free appetizer for us being so patient.

After another 30 minutes or so, out came our cold food. And after everyone was mostly finished and full, the free appetizer came along...gee, thanks. The bills came, and hardly anything was correct. After much frustration trying to get the supervisor to bill us correctly, one of our new friends asked if she could assist her at the register (she was familiar with CP's system), and our friend fixed and divided the bills appropriately.

When we walked out of Melt, it was almost exactly 2 hours after we had entered. Fortunately, I was with a positive group, some seeing CP for the first time, so we quickly moved on to what Cedar Point excels at...their coasters.

Ffej said:

Until the food service at Melt has vastly improved (and is consistent), adding it to the dining plan sounds like a terrible idea (as much as I love new options).

I went to Melt 4-5 times last year, and my conclusion was that the interior was really well done (lots of interesting Cedar Point signs & memories), and it worked just fine as a bar to grab a drink.

I gave them a pass after being open a week or two and serving cold appetizers after a very long wait. But I gave up on Melt as a sit-down restaurant after an awful experience with some new friends a couple of months into the season.

There were 5 of us, and just a handful of other tables on a slow park day. It took forever to get acknowledged, and finally, a nice manager/supervisor came over and apologized for being very short-staffed. She was our server (and the only one I saw in the place). She took our drink and food orders, and we waited about an hour for the food. Without us saying anything, she came over and said she was putting in a free appetizer for us being so patient.

After another 30 minutes or so, out came our cold food. And after everyone was mostly finished and full, the free appetizer came along...gee, thanks. The bills came, and hardly anything was correct. After much frustration trying to get the supervisor to bill us correctly, one of our new friends asked if she could assist her at the register (she was familiar with CP's system), and our friend fixed and divided the bills appropriately.

When we walked out of Melt, it was almost exactly 2 hours after we had entered. Fortunately, I was with a positive group, some seeing CP for the first time, so we quickly moved on to what Cedar Point excels at...their coasters.

In other words do not visit CP for the food.

My group came up with a good plan for Melt last year. The 4 of us were staying at breakers, so we got on the 30-45 minute waiting list. We stopped up at our room, they had a few drinks, and we went back to Melt. Our name got called maybe 2 minutes after walking back in. The wait staff and food were good and it was a typical restaurant wait for food and drinks. They were very obviously staggering seating people so that the kitchen didn't get overloaded. Point being, get on the list before you want to eat, go doing something for a few minutes, then come back.

We didn't get bad service the two times we went last year. We did however talk to our server for a good 15 minutes on one occasion, and got quite the candid run down of happenings there. It was sad to see her main experience with being in this country were 70-80 hour weeks for very low pay considering she was college educated and seemingly very smart. She indicated she wouldn't be coming back this year and most of the girls from the same country that she knew weren't coming back either. Although she never said it outright, it was implied that they weren't quite told the truth about their employment there back when they got scouted/hired.

I'm surprised to find out they severely undersized the kitchen and that Matt Fish let them get away with that.

Somewhat related, the manager of the panda express is a friend's, friend. He's very happy with his job there and makes VERY good money doing what he does. I think he's got 4 or 5 years there now. Perhaps they should look into that model for getting and retaining quality employees.

My local Melt has a text alert system when your table is ready. They should do that at the park location. Then you can go do something else while you wait.

It wouldn't be uncommon for a Cedar Fair park to do such thing. The Reds Hall of Fame Grille at Kings Island used to do this when it was a table service restaurant.

Wouldn’t that make it uncommon for Cedar Fair since they no longer do it?

The pager system was probably from a holdover food services management decision from Paramount Parks.

I'm pretty sure Perkins at Breakers uses the text alert system.

XS NightClub said:

Wouldn’t that make it uncommon for Cedar Fair since they no longer do it?

The pager system was probably from a holdover food services management decision from Paramount Parks.

Was just saying it's not like it would be a new technology for them to do it. Doubt it was a holdover from Paramount Parks since that location used to be a buffet that never really had a wait in it's later years.

Since this thread exists about Melt I thought I would mention that I just saw an article on Cleveland.com stating that the original location in Lakewood would be closing April 1st....no fooling. It is closing for some updating & renovations and should re-open later in April.

Even after they expanded, that location was never big enough. It seems stubborn not to move to a bigger place.

That area of Lakewood is grossly over saturated with restaurants, there are constantly ones closing leaving some attractive space available.

jimmyburke said:

Since this thread exists about Melt I thought I would mention that I just saw an article on Cleveland.com stating that the original location in Lakewood would be closing April 1st....no fooling. It is closing for some updating & renovations and should re-open later in April.

So.... it's not closing?