Mongo - The Cheaper Mongolian Grill

I've always dug Mongolian grill as a dining option. In the northern mid-west, there's a couple major chains that do it, like BD's Mongolian Grill, but we don't have that stuff down in Tallahassee, unfortunately. Super China Buffet used to have it every Wednesday night between like, 6pm-9pm or something, haven't been there in years.

In case you didn't know, Mongolian grilling involves having a long "salad bar" style table of raw foods, typically including noodles, rice, meat, vegetables - yeah you read that right, raw meat - eggs, spices, and sauces. You heap whatever you want onto a plate and take it to the griller, a restaurant employee who slathers your stuff on a big, round, hot surface, kinda like a hibachi stove, and they fry it all up typically using either huge meter-long chopsticks, or meter-long "swords" that are curved or angled in one side to assist in scooping. Usually several customers' meals are on this big single hot plate at once (it's like a 1.5m diameter) and the griller rotates around the whole surface and delivers the food on fresh plates back to the customers waiting in line.

Besides Super China Buffet's special nights, there really wasn't another game in town for Mongolian grilling for a long time. Now suddenly there's like three of them. I heard Genghis Khan's Mongolian Grill on Apalachee Parkway was the more expensive one, and I found myself at the smaller, cheaper, lesser known one uptown instead - Mongo. It's off of Kerry Forest in the left-hand plaza, right next to where the Red Elephant used to be, and next to Bayou Rouge Cajun restaurant. Mongo's a smaller area, not too classy but not real dingy either, about the caliber of your standard strip-plaza Chinese food "stand", but with more tables. The grill and everything is in the back, and that's really all there is to it. I don't think they served alcohol there. It ran me about $10-12 once I threw in a drink, but the fare was pretty decent. There was some variety, nothing too crazy for sauces, but of course you can mix and match. It hasn't seemed to crowded the few times I've been, so your service is pretty fast and it's a pretty casual atmosphere.

I guess I don't have much else to say or rave about it, but I liked it. The funny thing about Mongolian grilling is that if your food tastes bad, 9/10 times it's your fault, after all you're the one who picked the ingredients. Considering it's the complete other side of town from Genghis, it's a good location to distribute the cuisine evenly around town. Of course, a friend of mine did make the observation that for the format and what you're getting, you can get 90% of the experience for considerably cheaper by going to 1Fresh Stir Fry, which has several locations in town, but... I don't know, 1Fresh, good as it is, has its limitations, and you can really go crazy on a Mongolian grill recipe. Good observation though if you're looking to save a buck.

EDIT: Sorry to get your hopes up, but Mongo has sadly gone out of business. :(