Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Noah Pozner’s Last Fondue Dinner

Noah Pozner loved tacos. Now, we’re finding out he liked a particular fondue restaurant, too.

As family and friends trade happy memories of Noah, the 6-year-old Jewish boy killed in the Newtown school shooting, his older sister Danielle recalled Noah’s last trip to his favorite restaurant, The Melting Pot.

Not content with his own pot of melted cheese, Danielle remembered, the little boy with a big appetite for life wanted to try out hers, too.

“He always marched to the beat of his own drum and was incredibly stubborn, so I figured it was no use to try and dissuade him,” Danielle recalled in a statement posted on her grandmother’s blog. “Upon dipping his bread into our pot of cheese and trying it, he exclaimed, ‘Wow, that is the best cheese I ever had!!!’ He did not hesitate to take more, as much as he wanted, a smile on his face the whole time.”

The Melting Pot eatery closest to Newtown in Darien, Conn., had no idea that Noah was so a regular visitor.

Since the shooting, the restaurant has welcomed a number of guests looking for ways to take their minds off the tragedy, including another little boy who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School and escaped the tragedy.

“We’re a big family dining destination, so it’s kind of been a nice place for people to come and spend time with their family,” said James Layfield, the restaurant’s manager.

Convinced that Noah is now “eating Swiss cheese fondue up in the clouds,” the older sister wants to live her life in her brother’s memory.

“In order to do that,” she said, “I’d have to be even half as excited about life as Noah was.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.