For a brief moment in time, my town was home to a Doc Chey’s Asian Cuisine franchise. It was not fine dining, but it was cheap and fresh and they did amazing things to eggplant. They closed a few years ago, possibly failing in their competition with PF Chang’s across the street. They also make decent eggplant, but it’s not the same. To make matters worse, the Doc Chey’s location sat empty for months and months, mocking me every time I went to Whole Foods in the same strip mall. Until a few weeks ago, when a new franchise opened its doors, the Genghis Grill, a Mongolian Stir Fry experience. My family braved this new dining establishment last week, mainly because the line for Chipotle was out the door, but I doubt we will be back anytime soon.
I don’t know if the Mongolians are actually known for their raw food salad bars and giant griddle cooking style, but I have had Mongolian barbecue in the past, and it wasn’t much better. Near my home in Jacksonville, where I grew up, we used to eat at a Chinese restaurant which offered a regular menu and Mongolian stir fry. One of my sisters would sit and wait for her barbecued spare ribs or pupu platter to arrive, while my mother, my other sister, and I would mosey up to the Mongolian BBQ area to prepare our plates. I remember how the sliced raw meat was lined up in thin curls, still slightly frozen, which made it easier to slice, all stuck together like ribbon candy . A tray of sliced beef, all red, next to a tray of sliced chicken, more peachy pink, then pork, a paler red, and all of it a little disturbing. After the meat were the chopped vegetables, cabbage and bean sprouts and onions and carrots and peppers. And then there were all the sauce ingredients, the oyster sauce and soy sauce and red chili paste and garlic and hoisin sauce and all those things you find on the two shelves of Asian food at the grocery store.
Behind the salad bar arrangements of all these ingredients was a sign with advice on how to combine those ingredients to make a sauce, how many spoonfuls of each for the perfect combination. We would take our time selecting our proteins, our veggies, and our condiments, then hand our bowls to the gentlemen who would stir fry our food on different parts of the round flat cook top, but not so carefully as to keep our food selections from accidentally touching. Keep in mind this was before the days of food allergies and mainstream veganism, when all of your food could touch. If you picked out chicken but ended up with a little beef, well, weren’t you lucky?
After they finished tossing the food all around to cook it, they would serve it up on fresh plates and hand it back to us. We would rejoin my sister, who by this time was gnawing on her ribs or reheating a teriyaki beef stick over the blue flame of sterno. I recall sitting down, blowing on my first forkful, tasting it, and remembering why I hated Mongolian stir fry. It all tastes the same. It doesn’t matter what combination of sauce or meats or veggies you select, once they are all co-mingling on the griddle with everyone else’s food, it just tastes like bad stir fry.
But I forgot that part when we went to Genghis Grill. I was only thinking about how much I didn’t want to wait in line for a counter service meal, and how I have to cook every night for my family, and how nice it would be to try something different and be waited on for a change.
The restaurant space, when it used to be Doc Chey’s, had a nice feng shui about it, all cozy and sparsely decorated. Genghis Grill, on the other hand, is chopped up and arresting, much like Genghis Khan’s exploits. We wove through the restaurant to be seated in what had to be the middle of the restaurant’s main thoroughfare. Our server instructed us about how we go about ordering and then standing in line to make our food. I knew we were in trouble then. If you go to a restaurant where they feel the need to explain to you how to order, than somewhere their concept got away from them. Ordering food should not take explanation, especially if you are dining in your own country.
We each were handed a stainless steel bowl (yes, you should be thinking dog water bowl) and stood in line with a bunch of people who looked really disappointed that it was not in fact a buffet. My picky kid selected chicken. No vegetables, no sauce, no seasoning. Chicken. I coaxed her into adding a little salt and pepper to her bowl of raw chicken, the looks of which was nauseating her. The rest of us made our choices (I stuck with tofu) and then stood in line near the round flat cook top that was attended by about ten short Latino men and one tall American guy who kept shouting “Noodles!”, which would prompt all the Latinos to echo him “Noodles!” in response. I am pretty sure that is the only word they knew in English.
They tossed our food around with their little bamboo sticks, each in their own area of the griddle, stopping occasionally to squirt a empty section of it with oil in a fiery display reminiscent of a Japanese steakhouse. We were handed fun red bowls with our cooked food and some rice, since we didn’t want noodles, and walked back to our table. My picky eater immediately found a bone fragment in her chicken, which she spit into her wadded napkin. She then proclaimed her meal bland and pecked at her rice for a while. The rest of us ate quietly, without gusto. And you know why? Because it all tasted the same.Like bad stir fry.
In our silence, we looked around the restaurant. The walls are adorned with battle flag replicas and a giant fictitious photographic mural of Genghis Khan and his troops on horseback. My husband said, “Do you think in a thousand years there will be a Hitler themed restaurant chain? Khan was a mass murderer a thousand years ago, and now we are eating stir fry in his name.”
“Probably,” I said. “It’s going to be like a giant sausage fest, with all the entrees named after concentration camps. ‘I’d like the Buchenwald please, and my wife here would like the Dachau.’”
He laughed. “And the drinks can be named for notorious Nazi leaders. ‘May I please have a Mengele with extra olives?’”
Our children stared at us like we were the horrible people we are.
“All done?” I asked them. “Let’s get out of here.”
So, anyway, I didn’t much care for the Genghis Grill, but I am not sure if it’s because the food reminded me of traumatic childhood Chinese restaurant experiences or because it just sucked. Feel free to throw down your $8.99 a bowl and form your own opinion. Did I mention how much I miss Doc Chey's?
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