Mongolian food

scallion pancakes

That sounds oddly like Korean food to me. (Mongolian food isn't usually 'fantastic') Was the meat mutton or beef? The pancake thingee (did it taste like it had sesame oil in it?) sounds like 'pajun'...

Sorry...forgot this.

The scallion pancakes were probably a Korean dish.

And at the Mongolian BBQ, they don't actually have Mongolian food.

From Wikipedia<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Mongolian barbecue (pinyin: Měnggǔ kǎoròu) is a restaurant style of stir frying meats and vegetables over a large, round, solid iron griddle that is as large as 2.5 m in diameter and can cook at temperatures as high as 300°C. Originally from Taiwan, it is neither Mongolian nor barbecue.
AND
Public relations material of the [BD's Mongolian Barbeque] chain claims that the preparation technique was modeled on a practice of the Mongol Empire, when soldiers would gather large quantities of meats and prepare them with their swords on their overturned shields over a large fire. However, there is no historical evidence for this theory, and most of the ingredients used as well as the preparation method are entirely unknown to the actual cuisine of Mongolia. In reality, "Mongolian barbecues" first appeared in Taiwan in the middle of the 20th century, inspired by the japanese-style teppanyaki which was popular there at the time.<hr></blockquote>I did have barbecued lamb in Chinese Mongolia (Inner Mongolia). It was very good, but was pretty much just Central Asian style. I also had Mongolian Hotpot which was very good. We were staying in yurts in a commune in the grasslands (this was the early 1980s and the Chinese were still trying to force the locals to stop being nomadic. I have a great photo of a guy on a bicycle herding camels.) The hotpot was very hot; it was heated with charcoal. (Like this. We used chopsticks to dip mutton slices and some veggies into a bland broth. At the end of the meal, noodles were dumped in the broth and we had soup. Hotpot is probably more common in Chinese Mongolia; although it originated with the mongols, it's more of a Chinese thing now. It's a very long story, but the whole meal was very alcohol fueled and the evening ended with us teaching the Mongolians and a group of Japanese tourists how to do the hokey pokey (an American children's dance).

Plain boiled mutton was a real treat if you enjoy overcooked, strong flavored meat in greasy, watery broth. Mongolians traditionally do not eat food seasoned with much other than salt and like a lot of Central Asians, prefer fatty foods because they need the calories in winter.

Calling this "Mongolian bbq" is really too flattering to Mongolian cuisine.

the pancake things aren't just Korean...they're all over eastern China and Taiwan. And yes, they are delicious. I know a guy in Taipei who works at a restaurant off Minsheng Donglu, and he rolls the green onion lengths in dough so they're like concentric tubes instead of layers, and puts in about four times as much garlic as everybody else. SO. GOOD. OH. MY. GOD.

Anyway Mongolian BBQ is not Mongolian, not even a little bit. It's about as authentic as General Tso's Chicken and orange sauce are to Chinese cuisine.

I quite like Mongolian food; though I've not been yet, I used to teach in the USA and had a lot of Mongolian immigrant students. One day we had a potluck and they made all sorts of tasty food that I can't pronounce. Most of it was heavy on the fat, the wheaty carbs and the seasoned meat. Yum. And yes, a very "Central Asian" or south Russian sort of feel to it, with a few Chinese garnishes.

Lovely everyone! Thanks!

If we could just get the Brit shift on TTYC to be this helpful, all would be well with the world.

I loved the hokey pokey story, nutrax. I hope those Mongols kept it up and that someday it gets collected as a Mongolian folk dance.