Mongolia

I’ll start with an apology for the title but I couldn’t help myself.  Obviously I took the culinary passport north of China to Mongolia this week.  To represent the Mongols’ food I dropped in at the Genghis Grill for Mongolian BBQ.  The restaurant is in a nice area in a little strip center that was unbelievably popular today.  I wound up having to park in another parking lot and walk a bit to get to the Genghis Grill.  That was ok though as I was in third place in a Fitbit challenge so I needed the steps anyway.

I was greeted at the front by a polite fellow who asked if I’d been there before and since I hadn’t he took me to my seat, got my drink order and then came back and walked me through their process.  You choose your bowl size first from small, regular or large.  The regular was actually wider than the large but more shallow and I’m not sure it’s not the better deal based on the model.  Once I had my large bowl he walked me up to their Fresh Bar where there were essentially 4 stations; meat, spices, vegetables, and sauces.  The deal is you can pile as much in the bowl as you can without leaving a trail behind you.  I think the regular size bowl with a wider, albeit more shallow, profile might allow for a higher pile if you are feeling like a challenge has been issued.  As you can see from the pictures below there were a lot of options at each station and if you want to see what they all were check out the website via the link at the bottom.

I decided not to make it a challenge to see how much meat or how high it could be piled but instead went with some Mongolian chili shaved beef and Korean pork in moderate amounts for protein.  From the spice station I had some yellow curry, garlic & ginger.  The vegetables all looked fresh and I piled up a sampling from well over half the options.  From the sauces I only grabbed the Mongolian BBQ sauce and the Dragon sauce which was a little sweet with a little heat.  From here I took it to the grill where I got to pick three “sides” with the large bowl.  Choices were steamed rice, brown rice, fried rice, udon noodles, cabbage, and tortillas.  I went with brown rice, cabbage & udon noodles and a couple of eggs thrown in because why not.  You can see the giant grill below and the sticks they use to stir it around with.  Another place I’ve been had giant metal blades which I personally think were cooler but this guy got the job done.

The picture doesn’t make it clear how much food that was.  I ate all I wanted and still brought a box home.  I’m glad I didn’t overdo any of the spices or sauces since it is mixed all together.  The flavors all melded together nicely and I didn’t add anything else once they brought it to the table.  If you like to be inventive and try different combinations this is your kind of place.  You could come every week for a year and have a different recipe each time.  One more word about the staff I interacted with while I was there.  They were all very polite, smiled and were helpful and when they had a little rush the general manager jumped in and helped at the grill until the rush was over.  Overall thumbs up from me.

Here is the link to the corporate website.  Genghis Grill

Also don’t forget to check out Tell Me More to check out the Mongolian throat singing video.