Monday, February 23, 2009

Mongolian BBQ

Today I took my dad to the VA and afterwards to lunch at a Mongolian BBQ I've had my eye on. It was great fun, though the sauce was nowhere near thick or spicy enough! I will have to complain. Apparently, I'm good at that.
Despite the lack of spice, the selection at this place was excellent. For those of you who have never gone to a Mongolian BBQ, it's a wonderful conceit: you get a bunch of frozen meat that looks rather like plastic sushi in great chunks. These places generally have a good selection, and include among them my favorite: lamb. Yes I know that lambs are cute and all that, but let's face it... if you are going to eat meat, you shouldn't concern yourself too much with that. I don't eat veal because of the cruelty involved in raising that animal, but a permit myself an occasional meal of lamb.
ANyhow, the meat, whatever kind you get, is slice thin and is frozen. Then there are bins and bins of fresh vegetables, like slivers of brocolli, onions, green onions, water chestnuts, baby corncobs, cabbage, cilantro, mushrooms, etc. There is even tofu and noodles if you want to make the meal entirely vegetarian. While you're piling as much as you can shove into the bowls (a lot of fun), dropping stuff as you go, the waiter is putting hot puffy "biscuits" at the table, which are rather like small, elongated pitas that you are supposed to put the meat and vegetable mixture into and eat it.
Then you make your sauce. There are recipes that recommend how to make it spicy, mild, etc., and there are extra sauces not in the recipes, such as curry sauce. Next time I will pile on the chili sauce. There's lots of ginger water, lemon water, and chopped garlic too. I'll put more of all this stuff in next time. And then you sprinkle on sesame seeds and hand the whole mess to the cook, who stirs in around on a big metal drum until it's finished, then puts it back into your bowl. While I suppose that isn't the most sanitary thing to do, I have been eating such stuff for years and never suffered a whit from it. The place is otherwise spotless.
We had a wonderful time, and enjoyed the food quite a bit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love Mongolian BBQ, and your description makes me hungry for some right now.

Robbi N. said...

By all means--go and check it out. It's on Marguerite, near Burlington Coat Factory, in Mission Viejo.