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FILE---Bread is dipped into spinach and artichoke cheese fondue Tuesday, October 16, 2007, during a grand opening event for The Melting Pot restaurant at the Cal Train Station building in downtown San Mateo, Calif. (Ron Lewis/San Mateo County Times)

SAN MATEO — Rob Sanchez slides a gleaming silver fondue pot onto a burner in front of diner Kevin Sweatt, melts a handful of grated cheddar cheese with a soupcon of beer and invites him, "Go ahead. Dip in."

Bucking the trend of business contraction in the face of the economic slowdown, Sanchez and his partner, Andrew Clark, have bet their savings on the Melting Pot restaurant they opened here downtown in October.

"My restaurant experience is all lower-level, dishwasher, busboy, server, assistant bartender," said Sanchez. "Opening this restaurant for me was the American dream." In addition to his restaurant experience, Sanchez spent more than 10 years in management positions at technology companies, including Autoweb.com and Juniper Networks. He invested his life savings, some $200,000, in the restaurant.

Though Sanchez wouldn't give numbers, he said business is "going great. We had a phenomenal weekend for Mother's Day. Close to 400 customers came in, our biggest day of the year." The restaurant opened solid and did very well for the first three months, he said. Now, with the economy slipping, "we're not doing a whole lot more than last year, but we're not dropping off," Sanchez said.

Despite Sanchez's optimism and the Melting Pot's fortuitous location in the San Mateo Caltrain station building, there's no assurance that B Street will be Easy Street for the newcomers.

Across the board,

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from upscale eating to fast food, people are making fewer restaurant visits and spending less when they do go out, a restaurant industry analyst said.

"The restaurant industry is definitely in a slump," said Bob Goldin, executive vice president of food consultant Technomic Inc. "People still go out, but they are much more frugal about how they spend."

Watching Sanchez and his 40-member team whisk trays to customers at warp speed Saturday night, you'd never know the industry is softening like a portobello mushroom soaking in a fondue pot. Every table in the place is occupied and a few regulars are lined up at the 25-foot-long brown-and-white-speckled granite bar.

A silver-haired gentleman at the bar sips a glass of Sierra Nevada, followed by a California salad, one of Sanchez's specialties.

"The way I see it, one Caesar salad is like another," Sanchez said as he stacked glasses at a breakneck (but not break-glass) pace. "But this salad is special. The dressing is a raspberry vinaigrette. The mixed greens set off the blue cheese perfectly." The dressing is proprietary to the Melting Pot, a national franchise.

Sanchez says he got into the business because he wanted to be an entertainer. Watching the sparks fly as Sanchez flambés Bananas Foster, it's easy to see what he means.

"Consumers are in a scrimp-and-save mode," Goldin said. "Having high prices in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but right now consumers are being cautious in how they spend, so when they spend they expect a lot. You have to work a lot harder to satisfy your customer. The service has to be good, the quality of the food has to be good. It's like the housing market right now. The consumer is in command."

"They're good people," said Linda Asbury, chief executive of the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is housed in the same building as the restaurant. "They're Chamber members, and they're involved in our Taste of San Mateo event at Bay Meadows next Tuesday night. They seem to be doing quite well." Asbury likes to drop in for a cheese fondue appretizer at the bar, she said.

Comments about the restaurant on consumer review site Yelp.com (http://www.yelp.com/biz/melting-pot-san-mateo) are mixed, as is generally the case in online forums. Many customers give rave reviews, though some say service is slow.

Sanchez acknowledges that the place has had growing pains. "We messed up a couple of times. We would take any reservation if somebody called in and we weren't ready for it. I didn't have enough servers for that time slot, and we couldn't deliver the style of service we aim for. We've rectified that. Now we make sure there's enough servers for the guests on the floor."

Janis Mara can be reached at 925-952-2671 or jmara@bayareanewsgroup.com. Check out her Energy Blog at www.ibabuzz.com/energy.