If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The idea of ‘Mongolian Barbecue’ is in theory a good one – a meal tailored to your liking; choose your meat, choose your vegetables, choose your sauce, wait for it to be cooked and brought over to you and then away you go.

However, the reality is not nearly as good. On walking into the vast, noisy restaurant on Maiden Lane, behind Covent Garden market, we were shown to our table and given a quick introduction by the waiter to the ‘create your own stir-fry’ concept. My friend and I chose the ‘all you can eat’ deal for around £15, while our female dining companions chose just a main dish, i.e. to go up once.

What the waiter failed to tell us was that the side dishes (spring rolls for example) were not classed as starters and were therefore not included in the ‘all you can eat’ offer. We therefore had to go straight for the soups and salad – which were really disappointing. Sitting in a far corner of the room in big pots, both soups tasted like they were straight out of a tin, or worse still a packet. I didn’t even bother trying the noodle salad – it looked revolting.

As for my main meals, I chose my meat, my vegetables and my sauce and well…there didn’t seem to be anything ‘Mongolian’ about it. In fact, it was nothing more than a bland stir-fry – the sort of stir-fry I might cook at home, except not as good. And just to top things off, it was a stir-fry I had to queue and then wait for for quite a while because the restaurant was so busy (mostly tourists I imagine).

Admittedly, I went up again but only to get my money’s worth.

All in all, most disappointing and not cheap. The white wine was also bad.

1.5/10