Stir Fresh Mongolian Grill — Restaurant in San Diego

UPDATE 2023-05-31: Came for dinner. Still a great value and great service.

UPDATE 2023-04-23: Came for lunch. Great deal still. Great service, friendly staff.

UPDATE 2018-11-18: Brought my parents here. They met us, and they loved it. There were six of us and it was around $60. Excellent price! Everyone is really friendly and helpful.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

We recently stumbled upon some Mongolian Wok places in Los Angeles that were much better than the mall Great Khan experience, so we were glad to find a comparable place here in San Diego. This location is a little far for us, but we figure it will be worth it about once a month to come here.

They offer a one trip plate where you can take your leftover home with you for 11.95 or for 2 dollars more you get unlimited trips, but cannot take your leftovers with you.

Each trip, you are allowed one bowl, and one small bowl for your sauces. The Mongolian Wok in Los Angeles allows you 2 bowls (as far as I know) and you can put all noodles in one and all meats and vegetables in the other. These options are not really needed if the line to cook your food remains short. I only like these options when the line is long, and you just want to do most of your eating in one sitting instead of getting up multiple times. Probably better for you though if you do get up.

My daughter ordered spaghetti for her meal. Nice to have other options like these though we would have preferred she ate the same thing we did. After about 5 minutes the waitress apologized that my daughter's food was taking a little longer. Then again in 5 minutes she also apologized. When she did bring it out, she told us it was on the house. That was very nice of her, and I didn't feel like it took too much longer.

Our food was great, but the fish I tried I did not like. It tasted very fishy, but maybe because I wasn't really in a fish mood?

Everything was great, and the cooks were so friendly. Does it matter if the cooks are friendly or not? Not entirely, but it makes a difference on your experience.

I didn't order any beer, but noticed they serve beer. Maybe next time!

The only negative, if I had to come up with one, is the parking lot spaces are so small. You will see lots of open spots that you could not...

Food was good. If you aren't familiar with Mongolian BBQ, the format is as follows: they give you too bowls and send you to a sort of buffett. The buffett is all raw ingredients - chicken, beef, pork, sausage, tofu, whitefish, etc. You grab your protein, grab your veggies, grab your noodles, and put them in the big bowl.

Then you take you small bowl to the sauce line. They have components like soy sauce, orange sauce, ginger sauce, garlic sauce, and hot chili oils (bbq oil and dragon oil). They have a guide to help you build sauces of varying heat and flavor profiles, or you can throw caution to the wind and mix your own.

Once you have your ingredients and your sauce, you hand them to the cook standing in front of a giant, round, flat, griddle top. They throw your food on there and cook it right in front of you with the sauce that you made. Once it's done, they plate it up and hand it to you.

The flavor comes out similar to a stir fry. The ingredients are all good quality, and since the ingredients are cut into small pieces they cook fairly quickly.

The format is all you can eat, so after each run the waiter will ask if you would like another set of bowls, and then you can go up again.

This one is pretty good, but not the best MBBQ I've been too. In other places, multiple cooks stand around the grill, and each one manages a few "lanes" - essentially cooking a customer's food in one wedge of the cook top - and the then sprays the cook top down with oil and scrapes it clean.

Here, as they stir fry the food, it moves all over the surface and I've never seen them spray and scrape. As a result, the food starts to all taste the same.

If you have allergies, or religious dietary restrictions, I would call up and ask in advance if they have a separate "allergy kitchen" to cook for you, because otherwise your chicken dish will be cooked on the same surface that just had pork on it, etc.

Also, the place is REALLY out of the way. As a result it is never busy. Cuts both ways really - on the one hand there is never a wait, but on the other the place feels empty and it makes me think about how long the ingredients have been left out.

All in all, it's worth trying - just know what to...

Terrible service!!!! Terrible experience and sub par food. Terrible is short of the despicable way in which we were recieved here on 01/10/2024 at 8:09pm . The hours of operation say it closes at 9pm so I believe it is still a reasonable time to be helped . My wife daughter and O were excited because we have tried a similar style food at certain malls but this was far from equal. The employees were told and Upon entering we were immediately discouraged from eating with one of the employees stating they were closing at 8:30 and the other saying they already had been closed at 9pm... I asked how it works because It was my first time and unfamiliar with the protocol and was completely ignored by the waitress she just stated I was limited to the 1 entree because it late ! . All of the employees were negligent and never told me anything They were so rude my wife and daughter refused to eat and ended up not serving . They were speaking in a foul and disrespectful things about the guests in Spanish. I am a native Spanish speaker as is my wife so could hear an older gentleman harassing another employee for letting someone else in and the young girl ( the only decently mannered employee) tell him that she had let him in because it closes at 9 as it says EVERYWHERE. Far from saying sorry this same older man later took it upon himself to harass me and tell me next time you should come early so you can eat . THE WORST was the meat ..you can tell it had been left out all day and not replaced accordingly .abd the tables were not wiped down . I cannot stress how much of a waste of time and money this was. I will follow up with formal complaint. I never even leave reviews!! But this is by far the worst service I...