I live in/have lived in various parts of California. One of my favorite places to go to eat is Mongolian BBQ. At a Mongolian BBQ restraunt, you fill a bowl with frozen meat and a variety of fresh vegetables and noodles from a buffet. You then ladle on a combination of sauces (usually there are around ten different sauces to mix and match) and hand it all over the the chef. The chef cooks it right in front of your eyes on table sized round stove, and then hands you back your bowl of steaming food.
Strangely, the only places I have found Mongolian BBQs is Sacramento. My friends from Los Angeles and San Francisco have never even heard of it! Yet in Sacramento their are a plethora of Mongolian BBQ restraunts to choose from. In some parts they are so dense that standing on a street corner you can see five of them at once.
This is commonly done in all restaurants. My ex-ass (a chef) used to make a wonderful cajun rice soup on Mondays with Sunday’s left over brunch sausage.
I live in southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia. I’ve never seen a place that has just Mongolian BBQ, but a couple of new buffet places around here include a Mongolian BBQ almost exactly as described in the OP. You only get a choice of spicy or mild sauce though. I’ve gotten a lot of my co-workers hooked on it. Yummy!
There are at least four Mongolian Barbeque restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area. (D.C. must be the world capital of weird little ethnic restaurants.) I ate at a Mongolian Barbeque place in Cheltenham in England about 12 years ago. My older brother mentioned once that he ate at a Mongolian Barbeque restaurant in Saigon during the Vietnam War. I don’t think Mongolian Barbeque restaurants are that rare. There aren’t as many of them in the U.S. as there are, say, Thai restaurants or Ethiopian restaurants, but there are more of them than there are, say, Burmese restaurants. (That example chosen because just tonight I ate at a Burmese place.)
There are a few of them in the Portland, Oregon metro area. One is Chang’s Mongolian Grill (one of my favorite restaurants), which has multiple restaurants. Around the corner from where I live is a similar restaurant called Genghis Khan Grill.
These places have been around for twenty years. There is a Mongolian BBQ just up the road a mile or two from me in Silicon Valley. (They have these yummy semi-soft eggrolls.)
When I lved in Salt Lake City one had just closed, but another one opened (that’s where I first encountered it).
There’s one in downtown New Brunswick, N.J. Also, a buffet restaurant in East Brunswick, N.J. has started offering Mongolian barbecue.
Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any in the Boston area. I hate that. Some Chinese restaurants claim to offer Mongolian barbeque dishes, but they’re not the do-it-yourself items that the chef cooks on a round griddle with the long bamboo tongs that characterize “Mongolian barbeque”.
There are several in Dallas, though I haven’t been to any. I have been meaning to go to the Genghiz Grill which is across the street from Fogo De Chao, a Brazillian steakhouse that is awesome and I have gone to several times (despite the $35 per head cost).
Add another to the list. Huntsville, AL has a place called Formosa - a buffet place with a Mongolian BBQ.
Load the bowl with noodles, pick your veggies and choice of sauce, then take those plastic tongs and stand there like a mental patient chipping away at the frozen meat, trying to get a few measly scraps for your meal.
I don’t think the name Mongolian BBQ is trademarked, in other words, the ones around here are called BD’s Mongolian BBQ. So these may be variations of the Mongolian style. Either that or a franchise and they can add their own name to the beginning.
There’s one in Mountain View, CA as well. A friend of mine on first arriving in Mountain View, tried it and thought that the beef was carpaccio. He thought they just didn’t thaw it out enough Luckily the owner ran up and stopped him from eating any more raw meat…
Luckily the owner ran up and stopped him from eating any more raw meat…