Mongolian Bar B Q.

Between the 5 in our immediate family, we have a range of tastes in eating, when out. However most of us are happy with Chinese food and so when we go out for birthdays, or other special occasions, we usually settle for Chinese as it suits all of us. However even then some things are usually predictable.

We usually order a few dishes and share them between us all. However when it comes to my choice, the question usually goes something like this: “ And what do you want dad? Your usual sweet and sour pork?” More embarrassingly, usually I do.

Anyhow for my wife’s last birthday it was decided that as we live very close to a Mongolian restaurant that we should try it for a change. So we did. When we all arrived we looked at their menu and then decided to reject the other things on offer (Including S&S Pork) and go for their speciality, the Mongolian Barbeque.

This is where you go up to a cabinet and pick your choice of three different types of meat sliced very thinly (Beef, Lamb or Chicken; or like most, choose a bit of each!) Then you choose from a range of raw salad vegetables, all placed in the same large round bowl. Then you go to another table where there are about 16 or so large glass salad bowls filled with various liquids. Here you choose one of 4 receipts to make your own dressing (Mild, sweet, Hot and something else.) So you make your own dressing by following the receipt and putting in so many measures of whatever ingredient you are told to. Then, when your bowl is almost overflowing with this liquid and your food, you go up to a window on an enclosed Glass walled “Kitchen”.

All it contains is a round hot plate about the size of a largish round dining table and the Chef has two bamboo chop stick like instruments, a little over a metre long and he throws your food (literally) on this hot plate, whacks it a few times with his sticks, swirls it around a few times and then 30 seconds later, he uses his sticks to sweep your food off this flat hot plate, back into another clean bowl, then he does a couple of flamboyant swirls of the bowl in the air and hands it back to you through another window and moves back to the next in line.

So we all stepped out of our usual tastes and had Mongolian Barbeque that night. And all enjoyed it thoroughly. What about you? Are you willing to step outside of your normal and safe known routine and try the unknown, occasionally? If you go to a place, are you prepared to try the speciality of the place or do you always play it safe and go with the known and normal? Even if it is a while if ever any of us voluntarily go back to a Mongolian Restaurant, but if we ever find ourselves at one, we would have no reservations about recommending it to others as worth the experience.

What about you as we face this New Year? Are you going to stick with the familiar and predictable, or are you going to reach out even just a little, and try something new and different? I am not recommending new and dangerous, just new and different. You never know, you just may like it!

Anyway, have a great year! That’s an ORDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!