Inside My Table #92 | Excerpt
Dining Without Borders—Honey, Let’s Go for Mongolian!
By Dennis Abrams
I think it’s safe to assume that Mongolian Hot Pot & Grill is the only Houston restaurant to be part of a chain based in Inner Mongolia.
It’s true. Mongolian Hot Pot and Grill is owned by the Inner Mongolia Little-Sheep Catering Chain Co. Ltd., founded in August 1999 in Batou, Inner Mongolia. (Inner Mongolia is the Mongol Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, not to be confused for one minute with Mongolia, an independent republic just to the north of Inner Mongolia.)
At any rate, the mission of the Inner Mongolia Little-Sheep Catering Chain Co., Ltd., and thus also the mission of Mongolian Hot Pot and Grill, is the following:
Popularizing fresh deliciousness from the prairie
Impulsing the development of hometown pasture husbandry;
Carrying forward the catering culture of China;
Strengthening the healthy physique of human being
Now, while I can’t testify to the effectiveness of the impulsing of the development of hometown pasture husbandry, I can testify to the deliciousness from the prairie and the restaurant’s ability to carry forward China’s catering culture — and photos are available on request for anyone interested in viewing the strengthening of my healthy physique from eating Mongolian hot pot.
Actually, the food (at least the hot pot portion of our meal) is extraordinarily healthful. And delicious. And fun to eat as well. I mean, what’s not to like about a restaurant that puts a pot of bubbling hot broth on an induction heater at your table and provides you with a list of meats, starches, vegetables and what-nots (pork blood, I’m guessing, would qualify as a “what-not”) to cook in the broth at your pleasure? Consider it a kind of Mongolian fondue.
You have a lot of options when ordering. Do you want your broth original? Spicy? If you can’t decide, you can (as we did) get a half and half proposition, with a divider going down the middle of your hot pot, dividing the hot and not-so-hot broth. Be sure to sample the broth as is, before you’ve cooked any of your goodies in it. It’s a light delicate broth, chicken-based, redolent with herbs and spices. It is quite lovely on its own.
Now, consider what items you’d like to cook in your broth: meats, according to their instructions, generally get cooked first. (The waitstaff is tremendously helpful. In addition, the placemat has instructions as well. And on the back of the placemat is a lovely drawing of happy sheep ready to be colored with crayons. The place thinks of everything.) We went for supreme lamb shoulder slices, hand-sliced supreme fatty beef, as well as an assortment of house-made meatballs: shrimp, beef and lamb.
There’s a variety of seafood available as well, but we decided to skip it this time.
All of the meats were delicious dipped briefly in the broth (eight seconds for the meat, a couple of minutes for the meat balls) and eaten as is, but were even better when given a quick dunk in any of the restaurant’s dipping sauces. The menu has six to choose from. We tried the leek flower sauce, the garlic paste with sesame oil and the house chili sauce. All were good, but there’s one sauce that’s currently off-the-menu, which the kitchen is still playing with, dubbed “My Oh My” sauce. Ask for it. Beg for it, if you must. It’s a chili sauce gone to heaven — and it makes everything it touches taste even better.
Starches? We tried the house-made lamb wonton, which are absolutely delicious. If you have at least four people dining with you, you might want to consider getting two orders. They’re that good.
We also tried the house special wide noodles. They’re kind of odd. Made from potato, they’re sticky in texture and become translucent when cooked, making it nearly impossible to find them in the simmering broth. And, before I forget, your jumbo pot of broth comes with two ladles. One is for broth, the other is perforated, which allows you to fish stuff out of the broth without making a mess.
There are a variety of tofus to try. At the manager’s suggestion we tried the frozen tofu — he said it was best at absorbing the flavor of the broth. He was right.
Now, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but we were going to skip vegetables all together. Our waiter shamed us out of it, and we tried the assorted mushroom platter — a huge assortment of shitake, enoki and other lovely fungi.
You’d think that would be enough, but it wasn’t. I also felt obliged (and hungry enough) to try a few non hot-pot items. The Mongolian pot stickers were unusually tasty. (Lamb does make a great filling, doesn’t it?) Even better is the Mongolian beef meat pie. It’s a little like a double-layered Mongolian quesadilla, a hand-held pie with two layers of spiced beef separated and surrounded by flaky pastry. It was good on its own, but with a dab of My Oh My it was the stuff of food dreams.
Don’t miss the Mongolian lamb skewer — grilled lamb on a stick, crusty on the outside, still juicy and tender on the inside, tasting like nothing but perfectly grilled lamb, and absolutely delicious.
I know it sounds like we had a lot of food, and it was. So much food, in fact, that the staff had to bring out another table for everything we ordered. It did make me feel slightly better when I realized that nearly every table (completely Asian except for my guests and me) was doing the same thing.
There is dessert to be had, but if you’ve done it right at this point of the meal you should be pretty stuffed. Instead of dessert, it’s time to taste the results of all your cooking and slowly sip a couple of bowls of the broth, now simmered down and enriched by everything that you cooked in it. As the menu notes, it will help with the digestion. It also makes the perfect ending to a truly wonderful dining experience. One that may end any prejudices you may have against chain restaurants. Or, at the least, chain restaurants based in Inner Mongolia.
MONGOLIAN HOT POT & GRILL
5901-A Westheimer at Fountain View, 713-975-0687, www.littlesheephotpot.com
