Mongolian barbecue is not really Mongolian cuisine, and Genghis Khan of the Mongol Empire probably never had it while trying to conquer the world. And it has little to do with barbecue. The dish was developed in Taiwanese restaurants more than half a century ago, and the term was coined by legendary crosstalk performer Wu Zhao-nan (吳兆南) in 1951 when he opened a barbecue eatery in Taipei.
Established in the 1960s, Genghis Khan Mongolian Bar-B-Q is the oldest restaurant that specializes in the stir-fried dish today. It is about a 10-minute walk from Zhongshan MRT Station (中山站). The first floor of the two-story restaurant is closed during weekdays, so my family and I were seated at two round tables on the second floor for dinner.
At Genghis Khan, you first choose ingredients from a display of meats, vegetables and sauces to create your own bowl. You then hand it to a chef, who cooks it in front of you on a giant circular iron griddle. The restaurant provides four varieties of meat: beef, pork, lamb and chicken. They are thinly sliced and neatly piled in four containers on a counter. It also offers nine varieties of vegetables: basil, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots, onions and green onions, pineapples, tomatoes and water spinach.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
I had some beef and lamb, and a little bit of everything from the vegetable counter, so my creation looked colorful. It is said that an enzyme in pineapple can tenderize meat, so I added a few slices to my bowl.
Next, I moved to the counter where various sauces were displayed. All the labels for the sauces are written in Chinese and English, with suggested amounts for each. A chef told me that soy-bean sauce, shrimp oil, sesame oil and rice wine were the most commonly used, so I took one teaspoon of each and added some garlic and chilies just to spice things up.
Finally, I handed my bowl to one of the two chefs at the semi-open kitchen next to the sauce counter. The chef skillfully stirred all the ingredients on the griddle and added some water to ease cooking. The sizzling sound and tempting smell immediately aroused my appetite. The chef said that the temperature of the griddle could be as high as 800 degrees Celsius, so they moved fast during the cooking process.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
Within a minute, my Mongolian barbecue was ready. The quickly stir-fried beef and lamb were quite tender with a robust meat flavor. Since the chef added some water during the stir-frying, the vegetables did not dry out. But I realized that I added too much soy sauce because my barbecue was a little too salty. A traditional way of eating Mongolian barbecue is putting it in a baked sesame seed coated cake. My cake was crispy and flavorful.
Apart from the Mongolian barbecue, additional buffet items were available, including a mini salad bar, a good selection of appetizers and seven dishes. My favorite appetizer was mixed meat jelly; the mix and chilled jelly-like broth were a good match. Other dishes on the night we dined included a nigiri sushi combo (綜合握壽司), seasoned Venus clams (特調海瓜子), boiled neritic squid (美味軟絲), sea bream with teriyaki sauce (照燒鯛魚排), free-range chicken with green onion oil (油蔥土雞), boiling water scalded shrimps (白灼鮮蝦) and abalone salad (鮑魚沙律). All the seafood dishes were fresh and well cooked. Genghis Khan also has a variety of drinks, desserts and fruit to finish off the meal — though the former two weren’t anything to write home about.
There are three prices for the dinner buffet: NT$520 for an adult, NT$270 for a child (between 110cm and 140cm tall) and NT$120 for a young child (below 110cm), along with a 10-percent service charge. For lunch buffet during weekdays, it is only NT$420 for an adult. Overall, Genghis Khan was an enjoyable dining experience, and its authentic Taiwanese-style Mongolian barbecue deserves a try.
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
Photo: Eddy Chang, Taipei Times
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
RSS