Gobi Mongolian BBQ — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

THE SHORT VERSION: A clean, quick, and well-stocked Mongolian grill. Friendly staff, reasonable price, and proper fried won tons. You want to eat here!

THE LONGER VERSION: Mongolian grill is my favorite restaurant style. If I could, I'd eat at one almost every day. Gobi is an excellent example of how to do these kinds of restaurants right!

Two key components for a good MG: A broad selection of items to add your bowl and those items MUST be fresh. Gobi scores in both areas. Lots of variety in food and sauce choices.

I also like a quick grill, and this place was very fast. (I went to this one place in Denver which took almost 20 minutes after my foot hit the flattop... but that's a different review.) In the moments it took for me to identify drink options and realize they had a dozen potential add-ons for after the food was cooked (all well-labeled and clean), my dinner was ready an on a large round platter for eating.

Hey, this is a two bowl place! No need to stack your choices into a giant, sloppy pile of noodles and broccoli! Put half in one and half in the other and you'll have plenty! (And I'm speaking as a fat guy who likes to eat!)

I added some sticky rice from a serve-yourself pot. And a healthy pile of fried won tons - the good kind, where they are just fried and not filled with stuff first! There were a couple of sauce options there too, but I went simple with a drizzle of sweet and sour. Tables were (tonight, anyway) seat yourself.

My only negative (and it's VERY minor) was that the sauces for the grill were very thin. The flavors don't come through as strong that way. But that may be intentional. People who haven't eaten much MG often put on too much or too strong of flavors. I knew to add a little more and got pretty close to the spice level I wanted. My wife, who sticks to a mellower flavor profile, was very happy with how hers turned out as well.

With a bottle of soda and a tip, our two dinners ran just over $50. The menu showed slightly reduced prices for lunch and they had two levels of kid pricing (based on the height of your youngsters). Not bad.

We left...

For dinner it's not all you can eat (contrary to literally every other Mongolian BBQ place), they charge you more to press down on the meat. Yes, you read that correctly, they charged me $6 to press down on the meat, so I could put more in the bowl. I've never heard of this practice and is the cause of my not coming back. The service was poor, we had to wait to pay, and the staff seemed less than interested (the main host was on his phone and then went outside to stare at women walking by. . . gross).

I think most of the issues with this place can be forgiven, except for charging $6 more for pressing down meat, especially during dinner service. I would go so far as to recommend driving to San Jose for Mongolian BBQ if you have the craving- I don't want to support this business' practices.

edit: The value just doesn't seem to be there; for reference, most other Mongolian BBQ places will charge you the same price or less for...

I always go to gobi and the owners love me and always give me to go wontons and rice and the one time I go with my friends and we are eating happily. My Friend wanted to taste a bite of my meal because I was used to the store so mine was delicious and when we checked out this stupid haired boy insisted we “shared” our meal so he charged ME 10 dollars more, he didn’t offer wontons or a to go plate or anything. I told him it was just one bite but he said that was policy, if the owner had checked me out he never would’ve done that now my friends hate the place and I am not comfortable going back. I am disappointed in the service especially when I’ve spent so much money there already. I understand I was not there at the right time but I am just very frustrated I had to pay an extra 10$ for sharing a “bite” with my friend after I said plenty good...