HuHot Mongolian Grill — Restaurant in Springfield

Another update- Decided to give HuHot Mongolian Grill another try. This time was better. I will add another star even though the service was somewhat slow. The server was nice and the raw bar was stocked well. A few option changes ... water chestnuts are gone and ham has been added. I am not sure what recipe combination you would add ham to but ok. Maybe the sliced potatoes, ham, onions and eggs for a breakfast? Haha Another change is the prices have gone up. I'm not sure anything I can put together would be worth 17$, add 2 drinks and a tip... 50 bucks! So keep that in mind. This will definitely be a deciding factor when looking for dining out.

Update- I was looking forward eating HuHot last night but I guess they weren't excited to see us. We were seated immediately, they had many open tables and we were told a server would be right with us. We looked at the menu, talked for a bit and after 10 min there were 3 other parties after us that had drinks and or ordered their drinks and were getting food. We had yet to speak to a server. They weren't short handed as there was 3 or 4 servers standing and visiting. I made eye contact with 2 of them, one twice but they just looked away. The only server to be doing much was the server/bartender. She was waiting on tables all over. Wish she had been our server. So after a few more min, another party entered and immediately ordered drinks to the server working the bar. So, we left. The host at the door said she was sorry, but i doubt the servers cared much. I hope their conversation was worth it. 😕 Dropping a star for their lack of interest.

Stock questions- dine in, take out or delivery? Walk out What did you get? Sadly, nothing. How much did you spend? $45 elsewhere.

Original review- HuHot Mongolian Grill- the place was clean. We went early around 5pm. The cooks at the grill were friendly and chatting with kids in line. Our server was super friendly. We had the Crab Rangoon apitizer and both the house salad and Asian salad. All were good. The main meal is up to you. With so many ingredients and so many sauces there are an endless combination of possibilities. If you don't like it, it's your own fault. They have cards of recipe suggestions, I like the Pad Thai recipe with a little extra sweet chili and a little extra black Thai peanut sauce. I put that over Pad Thai noodles, chicken and some sprouts and veggies. I always think about trying something different then make the same thing. Lol They keep the food well stocked so you have many choices. The only real negatives - Some people get sloppy with the sauces and they can get pretty mixed. Also, if you go in a bigger group, eventually it gets harder to visit. Some go back for more before others, then they go back for seconds. When they return others are ready to... it takes a bit as you stand and wait for it to be cooked. You may be sitting and eating alone for a bit. It's a good place and...

The selection of toppings and the taste of the food was great. I had a lot of issues with their process though. We take some of the blame because we got there at the same time a bunch of other people arrived but the whole process could be greatly simplified.

The basic process is to get your two bowls (because they're little), fill them up with food, then add sauces, and then. . . wait. They have two lines on either side of the food/sauce bars that feed into a single bottleneck for the grill. The sauce bar was covered in nasty where people spilled stuff so you really didn't want to put your bowls on it. My wife and I had to juggle bowls while we added sauces. And then, you just stand there and wait.

People were bumping in to me with their nasty sauce covered bowls. People were spilling sauce and oil all over the tile floor in line. It's hard to blame them though, we held our heavy bowls of food and sauce for about 25 minutes before we could finally put them down on the grill counter. I'm sure their hands got tired. I did hear someone complaining to the chefs that they need to speed it up so to be clear, this is NOT an issue that the chefs at the grill can solve. They're making sure your raw meat isn't going to kill you. Don't complain to them. This is a process issue. Only management can solve it.

The line never really got any shorter while we were there and we didn't feel like waiting in line again. "All you can eat" is technically true, but also highly dependent on your tolerance for paying a babysitter, standing in sauce and oil, and waiting for 20-30 minutes per plate of food. Perhaps the process is intentionally set up that way to discourage people eating more, I don't know. But it certainly discouraged us. I also hope you don't have any back or foot pain that's aggravated by standing around, doing nothing for half an hour because that was the least fun part.

If it were my restaurant, everyone would have a tray they could put their bowls on. The tray would prevent spillage and make it easier to hold the bowls. Each table would have a set of tags that you would put on your tray when you go get food. Then I'd invest in a conveyor belt. The grill counter would be a conveyor that extended around the walls to the sauce bar. When you're done with sauces, you just put your tray on the belt and go sit down to enjoy the company of the people you're with. The conveyor belt brings the trays to the chefs in order and when your food's ready, either someone can bring it to your table or they can call your table number. Dealer's choice. I think the tray alone would solve about 80% of the problems without a huge investment but the conveyor belt would up the awesome factor by a substantial margin.

So, 3 stars for now. We may try it when it's less busy and see if we like it better because the food was really good but I don't recommend it...

When my friends and I were choosing a restaurant, we chose here. This was my first time coming to HuHot, also possibly my LAST! When I walked in, I had relatively high expectations; we decided to eat off of the buffet so we could all pick what we wanted; in my case, since I am a picky eater, I decided to get noodles with Ham and some Villager sauce that was the spiciest sauce they had. The noodles tasted good, and the sauce had a very spicy punch which impressed me in a good way, but I did not eat much of it because I tried The End 8 Mil Scoville Unit Hot Sauce at Pepper Palace in the same mall. Here is where the bad starts to come in. For dessert, I chose the Khans Chocolate cake on the menu; it looked so delicious, creamy, soft, and cakey. But to my surprise, when I got my cake, it was hard to cut through because it was FROZEN! Seriously guys, for the $7+ cake, why would you sell a FROZEN cake to customers for $7+, which is a premium price for a slice of chocolate cake? Very Disappointed! Oh, that is not all. Also, the average cost per person to eat here was around $20 PER PERSON! Highly overpriced to sub-par food. Some places are very luxurious such as the Chateau on the Lake in Branson, which was only $16 per person, and their food was mind-blowing and over-the-top luxury compared to your cheap, sub-par food that is poor quality for the money. My total came out to almost $30! Ridiculously high for a place like this. Additionally, when they cooked our food on the big burner in the middle and used the edge parts to clean off the spatulas, it was very disgusting as there were previous food gunks on them, and that is what the employees were cleaning the spatulas on and touched our food. Very unclean and unsanitary. Do not come here! I highly recommend you go somewhere else with higher class, clean environments if you want to stretch your dollar more or get way better value for your money. This is my first time going to HuHot, and most likely my last! Good luck staying in business as we went during a busy time on Saturday(Day after black Friday, and the mall was highly packed), and almost no one was there and providing customers with sub-par food for ridiculous prices and unsanitary environments where people's food are...