Mongols - Great Mongolian Barbecue!

Mongols has been one of our favorite quick stops for an inexpensive lunch or dinner for years. You can find other similar barbecue or Korean BBQ type places with similar food but this little place in Westwood, near UCLA, is hard to beat.

So what is it? We'll, first of all, there is practically nothing on the menu. But this is a good thing! You get to create your own plate of delicious food. The only two options are the bbq plate with a drink or the "deluxe" version which also includes rice, soup and a bread. We usually just get the basic.

You get an empty bowl and before you sits a big buffet or salad bar-like assortment of things to put in it. First, sliced, frozen meats (chicken, pork, beef and lamb). Next, the vegetables, such as onions, tomatoes, carrots, cilantro, green onions, water chestnuts, broccoli, etc. Once you are satisfied with whats in your bowl you hand your bowl to the guy at the end of the counter who adds the sauces and oil and he asks you three things... 1) Do you want garlic? (yes you do!) 2) How spicy? (mild, medium or spicy) and 3) Do you want noodles? (yes you do!).

After he adds the flavoring sauces, hot peppers, garlic and noodles, he lines the overloaded bowl up next to the cooking station. A cook takes your bowl and empties its contents on a big round traditional grill, kinda like a big flat wok. With a giant set of chop sticks, he pushes it around, cooking the food thoroughly before pushing it back on a large plate. You can of course then adorn your creation with seasame seeds or soy sauce to your liking.

Important Tips: When visiting Mongols for the first time, take a look for those more experienced than you at "packing bowls". If you just throw everything in there, not much will fit. There is a delicate art to maximixing the amount of food you can fit into that modestly sized bowl.

Tip #1: The frozen sliced meat is generally curled up, taking up a lot of room in the bowl. After you get the meat you want in your bowl, mash it down as hard as you can into a compact pellet of meat at the bottom of the bowl! If you use your bare hands, I recommend using the restroom to wash your hands before you eat to avoid the risk for food-born illness from raw meat.

Tip #2: You will want to fill the bowl with food well above the rim. Of course, the limiting factor here is that as you build up, things will fall off. The best way to do this is to build balast and "flying buttresses" around the rim to widen the rim of support. The best way I've found is to use broccoli. Take several broccoli pieces and shove the pointy cut stem down between the bowl and meat. The "flower" heads of the broccoli will be lined up around the outside of the bowl just over the rim, effectively raising and widening the rim if you do it right. Now you've got extra support to add more veggies and to support the slippery noodles at the end!

Mongols
1064 Gayley Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 824-3377