For 30 years, The Melting Pot of Littleton has invited guests to do something increasingly rare: slow down.
A meal here unfolds around the table. The leisurely four-course dining experience begins with cheese that is blended and melted in front of you. Bread and fresh local vegetables make their way to the fondue pot. A crisp salad arrives before the entrees which include your choice of seafood, steak, poultry, pasta, and vegetables. The finale, if you do things properly, is chocolate. It is a meal, but it is also an experience built around conversation, celebration, and the simple pleasure of sharing something together.
That has made The Melting Pot a Littleton destination for special occasions, celebrations, and family traditions since opening here in 1996. And while fondue is the star, this particular Melting Pot has something no other location can quite duplicate: its home.
At the western end of Main Street the restaurant occupies Littleton’s former Carnegie Library, an architectural landmark that has been gathering people beneath its roof since 1917. Before there were fondue forks, there were card catalogs. Before servers descended the stairs, police officers once did. And before couples lingered over chocolate, the building accumulated nearly a century’s worth of stories.
Some of those stories are carefully documented. Others belong more comfortably to the realm of folklore. That makes October a particularly good time to visit.
Because at The Melting Pot, the cheese may be melted, the chocolate may be warm, and the welcome may be inviting but in a building this old, you can never be entirely certain who else may join you for dinner.
Fondue feels perfectly at home at The Melting Pot because at its heart, fondue has always been about gathering.
The word comes from the French fondre, “to melt,” and recipes for cooking cheese with wine date back centuries. But the fondue most of us recognize today became a Swiss sensation much later. In the 1930s, the Swiss Cheese Union promoted the dish to encourage cheese consumption, helping transform a regional specialty into an enduring symbol of Swiss hospitality. The idea was wonderfully simple: put one warm pot in the middle of the table and give everyone a reason to stay awhile.
The Melting Pot has taken that communal idea far beyond cheese. Its four-course experience moves from cheese fondue to salad, a cook-at-the-table entrée, and finally chocolate, turning dinner into an evening rather than simply a meal.
The setting adds another layer.
Littleton’s Carnegie Library was initially funded in part by an $8,000 Carnegie Foundation grant and designed by noted architect Jules Jacques Benedict. For decades, it served as a center of community life. After the library checked-out in 1965, the building became Littleton’s police station and jail until 1977. Then came the disco, Pistachio’s, followed by a succession of restaurants.
Finally, in 1996, The Melting Pot Littleton arrived.
Thirty years later, the pairing seems almost inevitable. A building created to bring people together became home to a restaurant whose entire dining experience is designed around exactly that.
The books are gone, but people still settle in, spend time together and leave with stories. Only now, there is usually a pot of melted chocolate to share.
Generations of Littleton residents have passed through these doors—for books, music, dancing and now, dinner. They come to The Melting Pot, gather around bubbling pots, cook together, laugh over long-stemmed forks and save room for chocolate. After 30 years, the restaurant has become part of the building’s history itself.
And on an October night, heading downstairs to your table, you may stop to wonder whether all of its former guests have really left.
“Before there were fondue forks, there were card catalogs, and before couples lingered over chocolate, this historic building had already collected decades of stories.”
“In a building more than a century old, you can never be entirely certain who else may decide to join you for dinner.”