As much as I love Mongolian BBQ, having had it regularly ever since going to college up at UCLA, I…read moream being forced to face the glaring reality that Great Khan's isn't all that good.
I've been here five times in the last two years or so. And three of those times I've had the misfortune of biting down on a bit of dirt, bone, or something else that made me think that I had just chipped a tooth. It's a jarring experience, that I usually chalk up as an expected hazard when eating anything from carved off an animal or grown in the ground. But, when going out for a salad, you should only expect a rock hidden in your lettuce once every five years or so ... not half of all trips.
Also, the bowls seem to have gotten smaller, while the costs have increased. It used to be you could fill your bowl with slices of frozen meat, ready to plop noodles on top. But, now they give you much smaller starting cups where you put 4-5 slices in before they start threatening to spill out. It makes the finished product skew much more heavily toward the starch of those noodles instead of the salty beef and pork that should be the center, or at least an equal share, of the dish.
And speaking of those noodles, the last couple of times I've been here, there has been an underlying flavor to them that has been off-putting. I don't know if they've changed recipes or vendors recently, or if my palette is changing, but that stale, medicine-like, chemical, whatever you want to call it, taste that they seem to have now comes to the forefront of every bite I take. And without that proper amount of meat, or without an overwhelming amount of hot sauce or seasoning, that off-putting flavor can become very dominant overall.
Sadly, there's not a lot of options when it comes to this style of cuisine. Typically, if you get a bowl of noodles and meat, it's gonna have some kind of tomato sauce on it, not the stir fry you're hoping for. The food here used to be a nice delight, but lately it's drifting more into a hit and miss kind of place. And with Great Khan's being so far flung from home, it's quickly becoming not worth the trip.
