Thursday, May 29, 2008

Mongolian Barbecue


...is neither.

Discuss.

9 comments:

yellojkt said...

Okay, I’ll go first. I first had this Taiwanese style of stir fry at the Clark Air Force Base Officers’ Club in the Philippines. Thursday was Mongolian barbeque night and I used to love getting to pick my own meat and vegetables and watch it getting cooked on a giant portable round grille.

After twenty-five years of dimming memory, I had begun to think I had imagined this dish or that it was something that only existed at remote military base O-clubs. Then I was in DC’s Chinatown and went to Tony Cheng’s which is a fancy sit-down seafood restaurant upstairs, but has a giant Mongolian barbecue grille downstairs. The junior high memories flooded back and it was every bit as delicious as I remembered.

Since then, they’ve opened a Mongolian barbecue place in Columbia and it is one of my family’s favorite restaurants. We have my niece in town for my son’s graduation and she stayed a few days longer to do some touristy stuff. We took her to this place last night and she had never heard of Mongolian barbecue.

I’m just glad to spread the word about this delicious but ersatz ethnic food.

Up next: Holy Roman Empire – none of the above.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, walking the line a bit there on what constitutes a blog post. I suppose your lengthy comment gives you an out.

I like especially like Mongolian Barbecue, because I'm basically a carnivore. I enjoy going out for Chinese, but I always have to choose very carefully and pick around most of the vegetables. MBBQ gives me a way around that. Alas, this is another one of those things that are hard to find in Germany. About 6 months ago, we found a place that had it in the town where my mother-in-law lived, but she moved away from there in March and we haven't found another one.

yellojkt said...

The short post/long comment is the meta-point. Putting the comment in the post would have destroyed the pithy effect I was going for.

Anonymous said...

I figured it was something like that. If you're going to do 200+ of these things in a year (not counting the MoDo stuff, which is mostly reactive), then sooner or later, you're bound to get experimental.

Jeff and Charli Lee said...

Who cares what they call it eh? I loves me some Mongolian stir fry!

Elizabeth said...

We actually have a Mongolian BBQ in Juneau believe it or not! And I love it! I go for tofu and veggies, but my husband's a carnivore. It's one of the restaurants we can both get exactly what we want!
:o) Elizabeth

2fs said...

I get the "not Mongolian" - but how's it not barbecue? It's cooked over a damned heated surface - does it have to be a flame to be barbecue then?

TBG said...

Our fave Mongolian BBQ place is in Leesburg. It's called Golden China and my husband is always disappointed that they serve the food on plain white plates.

yellojkt said...

Watch some Food Network and you will get tons of explanations of how grilling isn't even barbecue. Real barbecue is slow cooked over indirect heat. Mongolian barbecue is really just custom stir-fry.