Forever Fondue

Friendly service. Our waitress was very helpful in making suggestions. Loved the cheddar smoked Gouda w bacon crumbles for the appetizer. In the end though I came out hungry. The amount you pay doesn’t match the the quantity you get. It is good quality though. Ambience was kind of blah for La Jolla.

My husband and I had a
gift certificate and we were looking for a nice night out.
The location is in gorgeous La Jolla. Which was very pleasant and great for after dinner exploring. Parking was alright there is a lot just to the side of the building that offers a flat rate $ 6 dollar parking that leads almost right to forever fondues doors.
We walked in the side door and went to the hostess stand since we had a reservation. After standing at the hostess stand for about 3 minutes eventually we waved down someone and we were seated. The waiter brought us our drinks and when we went to place the order we specified we wanted to do their all inclusive (designed for 1 person) and he stated that would take two burners and there were only 3 tables with 2 burners and they were all reserved. So we figured no big deal we just had to modify our order. We were just relaxing and working in customer service I understand it was a saturday night we couldn’t hog a double burner table for 2 people.
I taste me soda and notice it tastes off I let the waiter know when he came back with our salads and the soda machines mixture was off even the color was only a light caramel color. He brought me a new one which was lighter then the first. A kudos to him however he never brought me a drink with ice (I always order NO ICE). I informed the waiter that the mixture was incorrect or the coke syrup was low, the table behind us ordered the same soda and he didn’t say a word to them and brought them the weak unflavored soda.
The cheese course came out just as my husband finished his salad so Impressive timing, and even though I HATE beer, the cheese had a beer base and was delicious! We finished the whole pot.
I changed my drink out for another soda (my husbands soda was just fine the whole evening) but my second choice was incorrect as well! To justify the situation he did bring me a can of soda so I could enjoy my requested soda.
Then came waiting for our main course, it was only served 90 minutes after we first sat down. I understand its a laid back area but we had finished our cheese appetizer almost 20 minutes prior… We hardly saw the wait staff during this time we noticed one waitress was waiting on half the restaurant and they were being served just fine.
We ate our main course and about 15 minutes after finishing We were given our desert plate. Honestly the chocolate needs work and the desert plate could include more, and marshmallows?! No marshmallows?!
Our check however came before we even took a bite of dessert and he ran our card and had it back on our table in under 2 minutes… HMMM
Overall we were still charged for the 4 course all inclusive even though we didnt get to choose our separate courses, not a big deal the charges were only a few dollars off. (plus we had a
gift certificate)
Overall I am not sure if we would return, I am all for support local business over chains, however value-​wise Melting pot is worth the few extra dollars
Tip: skip the entrée, order 2 cheese appetizers (AMAZING) we had the 75% cheddar 25% swiss blend with a beer base and garlic YUMMMMM

Food Quality: 5. The camembert and swiss with carmelized onions made at our table was amazing! The dark chocolate with carmel was my favorite part!
Service: 5. Our waiter /​bartender appeared to be the only person waiting on all the tables. Although he appeared busy, he was still prompt and friendly. We never had to wait long for anything.
Atmosphere: 5 My date and I ate in a booth by the window and enjoyed cooking food at the table together!
Serving sizes: 5 The portion sizes were huge! We had plenty of leftovers!
Bottom Line: definitely coming back for more cheese and chocolate!

Pros:
— Great food!
Cons:
— Super slow service (we were here for 3 hours)
— Understaffed; inattentive waiter
— Sweaty waiter, dripping into our food
— Ran out of Diet Coke
— Opened doors next to table which made it breezy and cold
— Cash machine broke, delaying our ability to leave even longer
— Not as good as The Melting Pot
My boyfriend and I arrived at this restaurant and the first thing the seating hostess said was that they were understaffed tonight. She didn’t have any menus to give us, but said she would grab some. We were seated for 5 – 10 minutes before we actually got our menus, for some reason. When our server came to the table, he explained how they were understaffed tonight and apologized. We ordered our drinks and meal all at that time. When the server brought our drinks, he informed us that they were out of Diet Coke tonight and offered us regular Coke. We opted for water instead.
45 minutes later, our waters were empty and yet to be refilled. We finally received our salad and shortly after our cheese fondue. I couldn’t believe how long it had taken to get the appetizer. (After all, they bring out the raw ingredients and mix it in the bowl in front of you. There is very little preparation and no cooking required in their kitchen.) The one positive thing I can say is that the Queso Baja we had was delicious!
An hour after receiving our appetizer, our entrée finally arrived. Again our waters were empty, but he refilled them when he brought our food. We got one order of the Tarragon Chicken, which was great and came with 5 wonderful different sauces. The only bad part about this was the sweaty waiter. We had noticed how sweaty he had been all evening, but as he was setting all our dishes on the table, the sweat was dripping off his face and onto our table and possibly the food he was leaning over as well. I felt bad for the guy because he was clearly working hard, however he should know to wipe off his face before he serves food if he’s that sweaty.
About a half hour later we got our dessert fondue. I think The Melting Pot has better dessert choices, but this was still very good. We had the Turtles, which was excellent.
We asked for our check as we got our dessert, and paid immediately. Our server came back 10 minutes later to tell us that the cash machine was broken and he had the owner working on trying to fix it, so we would have to wait a little longer. Finally, at the 3 hour mark we were able to pay for our meal and leave.
All in all, I thought the food was excellent, but I never plan to come back here. The service was horrible, and based on other reviews I’m reading now, I see that this has been a recurring problem for months. Honestly, The Melting Pot is better and provides an immensely better experience. At Forever Fondue there was a TV at the bar, the booths were shorter, providing a less intimate experience, there were kids screaming throughout the whole meal, as well as crawling around the floors in the restaurant, and the service was just not as attentive or friendly. At The Melting Pot, the waiter walks you through all the food on your table and the whole fondue meal experience, but I didn’t get that same relaxed and conversational feeling here.
In summary, go to The Melting Pot for your fondue experience.

The negative reviews almost scared me off, but I ended up using a
gift certificate here. Same style as the melting pot with cheese, salad, meat and chocolate fondue, and I would say this place is about equal to the melting pot. This place was definitely cheaper than the melting pot and the only thing melting pot beats it at is chocolate. Forever Fondue didn’t have as many good selections for types of chocolate. Our meal was awesome overall! I couldn’t believe they had only one girl seating and waitressing. But, she still managed to be great and attentive. I would come here again if in the area.

This is a type of place where you only need to try one in your life (or once a year) just for the unique and fun experience. It definitely has the wow factor because fondue itself is fun and social way to eat, but the food itself isn’t special or extraordinary in any way. It’s a little on the expensive side. Service here is very good and prompt. Overall, i just don’t think that it provides me with enough value for me to want to come back.

Good, not great.
I usually avoid the entrée’s at this type of restaurant and stick to cheese and dessert, but I came here with some friends and I didn’t want ot be a stick in the mud so I ordered the veggie entrée.
The cheese fondue never disappoints. Delicious stuff, served with broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, green apples, and bread chunks. The entrees are all given raw and you cook them in boiling broth. My veggies on their own were nice and fresh, as was the gnocchi, but I still wish I had skipped the ntree and just had a salad. Boring and bland and I have to cook it myself? Meh.
My pear salad was divine. Fresh sweet pears, greens, feta, and a nice light vinaigrette. It was definitely a highlight.
The chocolate is always a winner. Served with bananas, strawberry, pound cake, cheesecake, and rice crispy treats it is a GREAT ending to a good meal.
Just do yourself a favor and skip the entrée’s. Its better to get a 2^nd pot of cheese fondue.

Cockroaches 15% off. What else can I say, we walked in were promptly greeted and seated and as me and my guest were having our drinks delivered, a cockroach crawled out from under the edge of the wall right above our table. My date almost freaked out but kept her calm and pointed it out to the server. The server didn’t seemed surprised and seemed like it wasn’t the first time even though he stated that he had never seen one before, my date asked if we could be moved to another area, I suggested we leave, she said it was ok… so we stayed.
In any event as we sat, and quietly discussed the cockroach to ourselves, we noticed that some of the tables were not being cleaned off promptly and allot of dishes and food sat at the tables for quite some time. Service was quite slow, and it appeared that there were only two people doing all the serving a young man and a young women. So we waited quite a bit for our fondue… which shouldn’t really take that long I mean realistically were cooking or own food.
My date speculated that because of the cockroach she assumed that we would be comped something or offered a free dessert or something.
As we finished the server came and asked us if we wanted dessert, we declined after the poor service and the roach, and just what we noticed about the cleanliness of this place enough was enough.
So our check was brought out, no discount, no stopping by our table for an apology… nothing. So at this point I asked to speak to the manager to the other server, she explained to me she was the manager but, at the moment was carrying a tray of food to a table and after dropping it off would come talk to me. After a lengthy wait she finally came over and I explained about the cockroach and service, where she explained she was short staffed and apologized for the slow service and said she would discount our check about 15%. I kind of thought based on our experience with the roach and generally slow service she would of comped the whole meal or at least half off. No dice.
To say the least I was highly disappointed with my experience here, the only reason I would give this place even a half a star, is because our server, even though extremely overworked, tried to do a good job at presentation, but since Unilocal still doesn’t let you do a half a star… this place gets 1 for effort on his part.

My man and I often go out for dinner in La Jolla or Downtown, and decided to give fondue a try since he had never had it. As some other people have mentioned, there was only one person working, but she (Audrey) did an amazing job. Never left us waiting and was very kind and friendly, despite the fact that she was all on her own. The food was delicious. Seriously. We got the dinner for two, which was more than enough food for the both of us, plus dessert. I have a feeling we will be going back [:

This is one of those places where you want an intimate setting and a place where you want to spend a casual classy date.
Service:
Maybe its just me… it seems like there is only 1 person running the show here. The hostess/​waitress was the only one there to sit us, serve us, serve others, and prep our food at the table. She was under control serving 5+ tables and was super friendly. Service wasn’t slow at all, but when you want something its a tad harder to track someone (her) down.
Food:
What can I say, we liked the food we order. The waitress helped us pick it out and since we were sharing we just ordered 2 separate pre-​fixed combos. It was good and was enough for us.
Drinks:
There is a good wine selection and just a few beers.
Overall:
Its a great place to bring a date and have an intimate setting where you get to play with your food. Easy to make a conversation over. Just make sure you have time and patience. If you’re not too familiar with the place it’s just like Melting Pot and your food comes in cubes for skewering, dipping/​cooking, and the portions are relatively small. So be warned.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!
I’m shocked that this place only has 3 stars!
Came here for dinner while visiting San Diego with my boyfriend and it was AMAZING!
Our waitress was really cool, friendly and knowledgeable and the food was impeccable. Any place that lets you dunk all your food into fresh, gooey, delicious cheese. I’m in!
The portions weren’t very large, but incredibly filling and I loved the dozen-​or-​so sauce samples they provided for you to try out with your fondue and meats.
And of course, the location… beautiful, elegant La Jolla.
A+ for Forever Fondue!

Came here just for dessert lastnight but I’ve been here before for their 3 course meal, I learned my lesson and only came here for dessert this time. Main course and salad are WAY overpriced!
Ordered the small «Dirty Angel» which is white chocolate w Amaretto. Let me warn you guys that this was REALLY sweet!!! Like, REALLY REALLY sweet! Dipping the cheesecake and the rice Krispy treats was overkill. I however, looooove sugar and I have a mouthful of cavities to prove it LOL. I am not one to leave food behind especially dessert so call me crazy but I drank what was left of the Dirty Angel fondue through a straw :-/​
Speaking of sugar, they do NOT carry Splenda. Good thing I always keep a stash in my purse. A man came up to me asking me for Splenda and I was like «NO.» Lol. At that point in my meal, I wasn’t sure if I was going to have another cup of coffee. I mean, come prepared next time buddy! And please Forever Fondue, please start carrying Splenda.
3 stars. Good place to have dessert just don’t waste your money on having dinner here. Total rip. I also agree w another Unilocaler who said it took over 5min before an employee acknowledged her party. It wasn’t like the place was packed. Maybe 6 parties total in the restaurant at the time.

Don’t come here if you’re hungry… you’ll leave hungry.
Don’t come here if you’re impatient… you can only cook so many pieces at once.
Don’t come here if you want to be full… it’s merely for tasting, not for survival.
Come here if you like cheese, because their cheese fondu is amazing.
Come here for desert, because their turtle chocolate is blissful.
Come here if you like sauce, because they have a variety of dipping sauces.
Overall, I will never come here to eat a meal. They are somewhat stingy with their portions in comparison to other fondue places. But I love cheese and chocolate, and those are the only reasons I return!

Every non-​yelper I know seems to love this place, but I’m glad to see fellow Unilocalers on my page… not sure what all the fuss is about.
I came here only once after being convinced that it is the best thing since sliced bread. A group of a dozen showed up for a going away party and we had a great evening of merriment, but I left feeling utterly uninspired and slightly hungry.
For the insanity price you pay to play with your food, you should walk away satisfied, but I feel far from that, and to top it all off, the food wasn’t particularly flavorful.
If there is a next time, I think I’d politely decline. Once is enough.

Perhaps my penchant for occasionally (just occasionally!) exhibiting a slight arrogance when it comes to dining has tempered my desire all of these years for wanting to experience a fondue meal. I don’t know, the idea of cooking my own food at not-​so-​cheap prices had never really appealed to me much. My good friend, however, recently scored a $ 25 discount coupon at Forever Fondue for $ 4 at Restau​rant​.Com and thought she had hit the jackpot. So, Friday night was the night!
The coupon required that we order two entrees in order to receive the $ 25 discount. There were three of us in our party, therefore we opted to order two of the Fondue Foursome options to split between us. A Fondue Foursome comes with a cheese fondue appetizer, a salad course, an entrée, and a chocolate fondue dessert.
CHEESE FONDUE APPETIZER: Out of five different cheeses to choose from, we decided to try the Camembert and Swiss with carmelized onions. This fondue is composed of a sharp gruyère and soft camembert, all blended with a white wine. It was served with a plate of vegetables, fruit and French/​parmesan herb bread. We all were a little disappointed in our choice. The cheese just fell flat, really. We had asked in advance if we could try a sample of the cheeses, but the waitress advised that it was not possible. :(
SALAD: I chose the Caesar and my two friends opted for the Pear salad. I thought the Caesar was just average, perhaps a bit underdressed. My tablemates advised that the dressing on their selections was a bit too sweet. That’s more of a personal preference, though.
ENTREES: We chose two entrees — the Original and the Quattro. The Original comes with beef tenderloin filet, teriyaki sirloin, tarragon chicken breast, bay scallops and garlic tiger shrimp. The Quattro comes with basil and blue cheese stuffed tenderloin, blackened salmon, chicken breast, and pesto halibut. The items were served raw, all of which we cooked in a boiling vegetable broth skewer by skewer. Overall, the meat was very flavorful. It took approximately 3 – 4 minutes to cook one skewer of meat; therefore, we were initially a bit impatient with the process, but seemed to overcome it rather quickly.
DESSERT: The chocolate fondue comes with a choice of milk, white or dark chocolate. We collectively decided on a duo fondue pot: half milk and half white. OH! This was really good! The chocolate was served with strawberries, bananas, rice krispy treats, cheesecake and pound cake. Delicious! The best part of the meal.
Our waitress was very sweet and helpful. She took her time to explain the menu which, honestly, can be quite overwhelming to a fondue novice, and she was a pro at instructing us as to how to cook our meat.
Plan on spending 2 – 3 hours for a four-​course meal. It was nice experiencing a meal for once where I was literally compelled to take my time in eating. I do believe, however, that Forever Fondue is a restaurant where you really need to know exactly what you want on the menu; one needs to be acutely familiar with the various cheese flavors to make an informed decision.
2 Fondue Foursomes + 3 Cadillac Margaritas — $ 25 Discount = $ 96 (including gratuity).

Brought my boyfriend here since he likes cheeeeeese. It was a good experience to have «real fondue» and the meal was tasty but not worth the money AT ALL!
We got the fondue foursome… tried the lobster bisque and original cheese fondue and the pear salad at everyone’s suggestion. They were good! The server melts a few ingredients together for you at the table for the fondue… it’s not that complicated.
The main entrée was basically hot pot. We got original and seafood which was a good combination of meat and seafood to try and you basically just cook it yourself in the broth on your table. and then you get half a zillion little dipping sauces that you won’t remember the names of. Be prepared to have a long meal cause you gotta wait for everything to boil and cook. Dessert was your choice of a chocolate fondue. who doesn’t like sweet stuff dipped in chocolate?
Honestly you will end up paying at least 50 per person and that was WITH a certificate from
. Go buy yourself a $ 15 burner and do it yourself at home– cheaper, more food, more cheese and quicker service.

Do not go! Bread was old, moldy; cheese was also bad; very expensive for very little quantity of food of low quality.
We got the «two for one» dinner for $ 54 which was cheese fondue of choice, salad of choice, and the traditional meal (chicken, shrimp, scallop, pork, and veges (broccoli, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms) with choice of beef or vege broth. (Unlike the «foursome» version, this one does not have the dessert/​chocolate fondue and you are sharing the meat/​veges instead of having your own. The foursome starts at $ 37 per person so it was almost twice as much).
The spinach mushroom salad with bacon and red onion had a bad vinegarette dressing. The salad had no hard boiled egg with very little bacon and mushroom.
We ordered the gouda/​cheddar/​garlic/​scallion/​bacon cheese foundue. It sounded good, but it was very disappointing. The «beer» mixture was heating up as the server put in shredded cheese that was clearly inferior, made of filler, and of low quality. I asked and was told that the cheese is from «Sysco.» The fondue had very little flavor and you could tell the cheese was cheap because of the texture, lack of creaminess, and taste. (The raw vegetables and green apple was fine). To make it worse, the pieces of bread to dip into the cheese fondue had green MOLD and was old; you could feel and taste that the bread was «leftover.»
The «main» course with meat and veges came with 8 dipping sauces. The shrimp, beef, and chicken were just okay, but had very little flavor.
You can tell I’m not a big fan of fondue in the first place (why pay over $ 50 to overcook food that swims in broth with no flavor and you get very little food) but I decided to give it another try after a 10 year hiatus (at Forever Fondue in Mission Valley, closed). It was bad then just like it was bad now.
Why not one star? I can’t say the food was not edible; other than the mold on bread, I just did not like it because it had no flavor, especially for the expensive price. Truly for taste (even if I did not consider the $ 54 price) I would have preferred to eat a $ 5 burrito or even a $ 3 hamburger at fast food.

Some may consider my review a bit bias as Honolulu does not have a fondue restaurant. I believe Maui has a Melting Pot, but with the cost of resorts and airfare combined, it’s cheaper to visit friends in the mainland.
I absolutely loved the restaurant. Some say that the restaurant is a bit pricey and I’ll admit it was. However, my friend I was visiting had a coupon from
and got us quite a nice deal. Our meal started off with a choice of salad, I got the Caesar Salad which was pretty decent. Next came the cheese with a nice array of veggies and cubed pieces of bread, which is like the appetizer of the whole meal. Next came with your choices of meat, poultry and seafood. All that within itself was overwhelming and filling. Lastly, came desserts which was a yummy, rich chocolate accompanied with fruits and marshmellows.
My favorite was the cheese fondue. The meats were good but I am a huge cheese lover and I loved it. The ambiance was nice and my company was absolutely fantastic. The desserts were yummy but after all that food I was stuffed!

Skip all the reviews, even mine, and just order the cheese and dessert fondues.
The full course of salad, cheese fondue, seafood and meat fondue, and dessert fondue was very fulfilling. They call this four course meal a, «Four-​some,» which I think is tacky. Folie a Deux can pull off, «Menage a Trois,» but Forever Fondue can’t.
The first item that came out was a Gorgonzola salad with ample amounts of cheese. Yum. Finished.
Next came the cheese fondue; they have a few varieties: Cheddar, Mexican fiesta and traditional Swiss Gruyère (w/​Camembert). We got the latter and it was good although next time I would get a sharper cheese. All the sourdough, pumpernickel, and baguette bread you want (they asked for trouble, they got it). The vegetables were standard-​fare veggies; for a ~$ 12 cheese fondue, don’t be an asshat expecting organic veggies.
Seafood and meat fondue. Boiling meat in water (broth), big whoop. No surprise here. Boring but it’s fun because fondue is fun.
We hung the moon with the dessert fondue. We got half milk chocolate and half white chocolate. It also came with fruit pieces and pieces of cheesecake.
Tips:
1) Skip the main course of dippable meat. They are just pieces of meat you dip in seasoned boiling water.
2) Just order the cheese and dessert fondues. Trust me, you will get full just by ordering the cheese and dessert.
3) It gets real stuffy (think of all the steam)
Perfect date place (fondue is fun, tasty and novel, at least in my opinion) and great for entertaining out-​of-​town guests like family.

I’m not sure why dipping pieces of food in liquid translates to romantic formal dining, but I’ll just chalk it up to me being a guy. Cooking your own food over a hot plate can be messy work and warms you up quickly. There’s no need to ever wear a sweater or jacket to a fondue place. So that plus the fact that it takes forever (perhaps the business is appropriate?) to prep the food is why I’m not big on fondue. I was once again out-​voted and we had to make our ‘once in long while’ jaunt to do fondue.
With all that out of my system, I have always enjoyed my fondue experiences due solely to the good company that I’ve shared. This was also the case for this visit to FF. The meal pacing was on the slow side and if I didn’t enjoy the company, the whole thing would’ve been a painful ordeal.
A strong point of Forever Fondue is that it isn’t super intimate and the mood is upbeat. If you did want to ‘do fondue’ at FF, it felt like wearing flip flops and a t-​shirt would be alright.
We chose to do the four course deal and it went for me as follows:
1. Appetizer — cheddar, gouda, bacon & chive sauce (
): my favorite course of the meal. The cheese is mellow so if you’re into pungent and/​or strong flavors, go for the Swiss
2. Salad — warm spinach & mushroom salad (
): my second favorite course. I love spinach and there was plenty of it so there you go. The champagne vinaigrette was nice and there was enough of it without drowning the spinach. For how much you’re paying for the meal, the tomatoes were terrible. The tomatoes were probably the worst ones I’ve had on a salad and I’ve had salad at places like Sizzler. They were mealy and flavorless beef steak tomatoes.
3. Fiesta plate — shrimp, carnitas, carne asada, pollo asado and assorted veggies (
): The flavors were nice and veggies fresh. Took forever to get through and was annoying to time, but it goes with the territory.
4. Dessert plate — banana bread, pound cake, rice krispies, cheesecake, assorted fruit (
) w/​Chocolate Emperor sauce (milk choc, macadamia nuts, gran marnier,
): the baked items weren’t anything special as stand-​alones but once again the produce and nice and fresh.
I will once again ‘do fondue’ one day but elsewhere. I already can’t bear the whole experience on a regular basis so I’ll just eat around to find the best fondue spot in town.