Mix it up at Mongolian grill

EDMONDS – Besides the familiar server-brings-it-to-you style of Chinese food, there’s a second style that we haven’t explored in recent years. It’s called Mongolian grill or Mongolian barbecue or Mongolian barbecue grill. It’s like a cafeteria but more fun.

Most Mongolian grills ask that you pay before beginning your meal. Then, you find a plate or bowl and heap on the ingredients. Next, you give your bowl of goodies to a cook, who tosses the food on a cast-iron cooking surface the size of some dance floors. Using extra-long chopsticks, the cook stir-fries your meal, scoops it back into your bowl with a flourish and gives it back to you.

It’s not clear where this style of cooking originated. One restaurant claims that it started when Kubla Khan’s warriors cooked their meals on their shields. A romantic idea, but it’s been discredited.

What is clear is that this food is quick, flavorful, fresh and you select what does (or doesn’t) go into your meal ($6.50 for lunch, $7.95 for dinner). What could be better? By the way, anyone old enough to dislike beets or asparagus really, really enjoys a visit to this type of restaurant ($3.95 for children).

At Khan’s Mongolian Grill on Highway 99 here, you begin with a bowl and then decide between three kinds of noodles. On top of the noodles, you stack freshly cut vegetables including carrots, two types of mushrooms, celery, bean sprouts, zucchini, cabbage and tomatoes. This is topped by one or a combination of the nine sauces including Asian ones like teriyaki, spicy peanut or sweet and sour or non-Asian such as Cajun. At the cooking area, you select beef, lamb, pork, chicken, fish, calamari, shrimp or tofu.

Unlike other Mongolian grills, the cook at Khan’s adds the pre-portioned meat or tofu to your vegetables just before your meal goes on the grill. Other restaurants allow you to add as much meat as you wish or to mix them.

Other important things to know about Mongolian grill restaurants:

* Khan’s adds rice to your meal regardless of what you put in your bowl.

* Some grills permit multiple trips through the line. Khan’s allows only one. The advantage of a restaurant that allows multiple trips is that you can vary your dishes, making one sweeter, spicier or lighter. If I had known before I started that Khan’s was a one-bowl place, I would have made different choices and stacked the bowl much, much higher. My friend, who had eaten there before, did a much better job of filling his bowl to overflowing before arriving at the cooking station.

After our lunches were cooked, we found our favorite drinks in the locker and sodas from the fountain. My friend did a better job of mixing the sauces and getting enough so the flavor came through. Although I thought three ladles of Mongolian sauce would overpower my noodles and vegetables, they didn’t. My lunch was thinly flavored, and I didn’t have enough to make it feel like it was worth the price.

As I said, know if you’re in a one-bowl restaurant. Then heap it on, mix it up and enjoy!

Herald restaurant reviewers accept no invitations to review, but readers’ suggestions are always welcome. Reviewers arrive unannounced, and The Herald pays their tabs.

Contact Anna Poole at features@heraldnet.com.