On one side of the restaurant are most of the tables, where guests can order traditional Chinese food. On the other side are the makings of Mongolian barbecue — a sort of build-your-own stir fry which is then cooked on a huge circular griddle while you wait.

Choose from thinly sliced, frozen beef, pork or lamb, as well as chicken, barbecue pork and other specialty meats (including some tiny octopi). Then add whichever noodles and chopped vegetables you like. Finally, combine any of about a dozen sauces to flavor your dish. Hand your creation to the cook and in a couple of minutes it’s steaming on your plate. And it’s all you can eat for $9.45.

It’s great that you can get exactly what you want, but the dishes are only as good as you can make them. Mongolian Grill posts a few sauce suggestions as a guide, but we found our dish creations weren’t quite as tasty as we had hoped.

And there’s no one to blame but ourselves. The ingredients were all well-prepared and there was enough selection, but some more suggestions about ingredient and sauce combinations could make for a better experience.

Back on the Chinese side, we tried some of the house specialties. Dishes are served “family style” here, on big platters with smaller plates for serving. Each entree was enough to feed two people (or one very, very hungry person).

The Chinese fare is pretty standard here. There are 105 menu items offered for dinner, most of which we had seen somewhere before. There are fewer items offered at lunch (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.), but the prices are agreeable ($5.50 to $6.25). Mongolian Grill also offers family dinner combinations, which come with soup and appetizers.

The sauce on the Sweet and Sour Combo (with shrimp, pork and chicken) was great — not thick and sludgy, not so artificially red. The Kung Pao Deluxe (with shrimp, beef and chicken) and Cashew Chicken both had good flavor, but much of the chicken was dark meat so the chunks of meat tasted a little too fatty.

The service was speedy and courteous, packaging our leftovers and cleaning up after a messy baby. The atmosphere is nothing exciting, but the Mongolian barbecue is fun enough that we’ll be back later.