CLOSED: King Kahn: Mongo’s Stir Fry offers meal fit for a warrior
The Barbarian from Mongo's Stirfry in Provo allows customers to pick their own vegetables, meats, noodles, and sauce. Photographed on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. JAMES ROH/Daily Herald
Bill Tran prepares a meal at Mongo's Stirfry in Provo on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. JAMES ROH/Daily Herald
The Barbarian from Mongo's Stirfry in Provo allows customers to pick their own vegetables, meats, noodles, and sauce. Photographed on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. JAMES ROH/Daily Herald
After several weeks of listening to co-workers rave about it, we decided to visit the new Mongo’s Stir Fry on Bulldog Boulevard in Provo.
Considering the many exuberant reports coming from my colleagues in the sports department, it seemed apropos to join a few of them at Mongo’s to watch last week’s BYU-San Diego State matchup in the Poinsettia Bowl. Did we enjoy our evening? Let’s just say that we’re not sure who had the better night, Mongo’s or BYU do-everything linebacker Kyle Van Noy.
We were cheerily greeted upon entering the restaurant, and after mentioning that we wanted a location where we could watch the game — Mongo’s has two flat-screen TVs — were led to a booth in the back next to our sports page compadres. The restaurant is much larger than it may appear from the street entrance, which is a bit skinny, but it extends quite deep — much farther, we imagine, than most BYU pass completions this season.
Seating is divided into a variety of booths and tables to the left and right of the building as the food and cooking stations run right down the middle of the restaurant. The whole visual set-up seemed somewhat daunting to us first-timers due to the sheer myriad ingredient options, but turned out to really be quite simple and fun once we worked our way down the line.
The menu itself is quite easy to maneuver as there are four basic options. Servings come in three bowl sizes — Little Khan, Mighty Khan and Barbarian (from smallest to largest) — or an all-you-can-eat option. Since we planned on watching most of the football game anyway, we audibled into an all-you-can-eat formation and spread out across the serving line.
Upon further review, we made a slight tactical error on the first pass through by overdoing things a bit too much. There were so many delectable ingredients available, we immediately started piling on all our favorites, when we might have been better served to show a bit more moderation. But everything was so tempting — and tasted so good — we could easily be forgiven for our slight error.
As for ingredients, the playbook at Mongo’s is chock full of great vegetables and add-ins before you even get to pondering the meats and noodles. As a partial list, there were red and green peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts, sprouts, pea pods, spinach, cucumber, red and white onions, small corn cobs, celery, cashews, sunflower seeds and much, much more. As for meats, options included thinly sliced beef, chicken, pork, ham and crab. There were also regular and gluten-free noodles available.
One tip, which Mongo’s makes clear, is that you can pile your ingredients and noodles up to 4 inches above the rim of your bowl. This is because the ingredients all shrink down during cooking. This doesn’t matter so much for those doing all you can eat, but it could make quite a difference to those buying a specific bowl size.
Perhaps the most daunting part of the process for first-timers is choosing which blend of sauces to add to your concoction. By our count there were 16 different flavorings offering an array of choices ranging from sweet to spicy. A few options included sweet and sour, barbecue teriyaki, ginger, Thai peanut, Mandarin orange, plum, lemon, sesame oil, pepper and garlic, and several more. Our waiter encouraged us to mix and match various combinations until we figured out what we really liked. We added on the recommended six to eight small ladles total of three different sauces, and really enjoyed experimenting once we got the hang of it.
Once your bowl is complete, just hand it over to one of the chefs, who will then plop the contents down on a big, round griddle near the front of the restaurant. The chefs walk around the griddle several times clockwise, swooshing and moving your serving contents with a wand as they go, before eventually sliding it all (hopefully) back in your bowl.
Considering you choose all the contents of your meal, there really is no way to go wrong at Mongo’s (unless, we imagine, you experiment with a sauce that you end up not really caring for). We downed three entirely different bowls (Little Khan size) during the course of the game and left completely satisfied — both with the meal and with BYU’s fourth-quarter demolition of the Aztecs. It was a win-win proposition from our standpoint.
All things considered, Mongo’s offers a good deal on price, with the charge rising around $2 between lunch and dinner (after 4:30 p.m.) hours. The Barbarian bowl and the all-you-can-eat option cost the same, the difference being that you can take your Barbarian leftovers home.
As it turned out, the raves of our co-workers regarding Mongo’s were well-founded. Why, we literally saw some of them jumping up from their table and applauding in the aisle during their meal. Of course, in retrospect, that might have been about the time Van Noy returned an interception for his second defensive touchdown of the fourth quarter. But maybe it was partially directed toward their meal.
Mongo’s Stir Fry
Where: 150 W. Bulldog Blvd., Provo
Hours: 10:45 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 10:45 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday
Prices: $5.79-$10.99, kids menu $4.79-$6.79
Info: (801) 375-2660, www.facebook.com/MongosStirfry