My impression of chocolate fondue is warm chocolate either sitting nicely in a pot or oozing in a fountain. Haagen Daaz' fondue falls in the former category except it isn't warm.

Despite waiting for ages (by this I mean at least an hour), the chocolate was never warm. At best, it was at room temperature.

We lifted the pot of chocolate after ten minutes of waiting and found it was sitting on a hot water bath. So we asked for hot water to be refilled in the pot.

We wondered why there was a tea light beneath when it was a heavy porcelain pot, a poor conductor of heat.

Anyways, at the end of our meal, one of their managers came round with the bill (it was about $40 for the fondue) and asked if everything was alright, we fed back that the chocolate wasn't warm.

To our surprise, he explained that they were using a chocolate sauce that their supplier said they shouldn't warm.

We left it at that.

It's rather odd that they have a hot water bath and a tea light, which I presume are supposed to keep the chocolate warm (and failed to do so miserably) but then they say the chocolate isn't supposed to be warm?

I don't geddit.