HuHot is HEINOUS

[sasha_feather]

I am still extremely tired and today I cried for no reason. That was odd. I ate some leftover choco-raspberry cake that lilaia gave me, and that helped.

Mystickeeper said I should blog about my Strange Chain Restaurant experience.

My high school friends wanted to eat at HuHot Mongolian Grill. One funny thing was, we all showed up 10 to 15 minutes early for our dinner date. A Minnesota culture thing? IDK.

The food was OK, and there is a novelty aspect where you choose your own food and they cook it on a big grill in front of you (not food allergy friendly since it gets mixed up with other people's-- shared surfaces).

But I was disturbed by the menu. There is a Mongolian motif of a guy with NO EYES. Fierce eyebrows, a goatee, and helmet. Then the language:

Control your destiny. (Look what it did for Genghis.)

PREPARE FOR BATTLE
Advance to the fresh food bar and commandeer a bowl.

CONTROL YOUR DESTINY
Choose your favorites from a bountiful selection of meats seafood noodles and vegetables

POUR ON THE FLAVOR - The Essential Weapon
Ladle on our Specialty Sauces or express your inner warrior by creating your own unique blend from the ingredients provided. Use 5-6 ladles of sauce.

ADVANCE TO THE GRILL
Watch as your chosen ingredients are cooked before your eyes on our grill of epic proportions!

TAKE BACK THE BOUNTY
Behold your piping hot creation! Return to your table and enjoy.

RELIVE THE CONQUEST
The grill is unlimited, so mix it up again. Remember to leave room for the Final Pillage... dessert.

Antoine said something about how the staff must be carefully trained... because if they are encouraging customers to pillage, what else are they expecting?!!

This is all directly from their website. It's a chain restaurant that you can find in Suburban landscapes.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oh that is too weird?

I can picture the kitchen staff taking up their stockpot lids and carving knives for self-defense drills in the parking lot.

There's one of those in Madison.

Honestly

[nexa.livejournal.com]

I chuckled. Just a little.

Re: Honestly

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Theme chain restaurants can be seriously barftastic and/or mental.

I once nearly freaked out from being present inside a Rainforest Cafe. Luckily my friend came by and got me out of there.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

I just Googled Rainforest Cafe. SCARY.

[kagenokaji.livejournal.com]

I actually really like Mongolian BBQ places like HuHot and the non-chain one in Appleton. I really enjoy experimenting with the sauces and stuff, and then watch them use giant fires.

But yes, the written bit is overly weird. Change a few words and it could be a viking theme.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Yeah I enjoyed the food pretty well, and I think my friends did too. I would go to a non-HuHot Mongolian restaurant again I think. I'm not a big fan of buffets which this was and honestly I'd rather have *them* put together my meal. That's my own preference though.

I'm not sure why they feel the need to be so kitchy and heavy-handed with the menu and theme. It seems like the food should speak for itself.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Right! What does conquest have to do with eating dinner? I guess I can understand "feasting" but the rest of it did not exactly enhance my appetite.

[homo-nescius.livejournal.com]

There's a similar Mongolian BBQ place in Milwaukee that I went to. The racial stereotypes were frightening. I'm all for cheekiness, you call this a pirate restaurant and we're playing a different game, but Mongolian pillaging? Seriously?

I'm just surprised they didn't complete the ensemble with broken English.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Totally.

[benet.livejournal.com]

"Paging Edward Said. White courtesy telephone please."

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Nice. :)

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

This is so heavy-handed and offensive on so many levels. Are you instructed to rape the chickens and cows before you serve them? Or are you too noble to rape but not too noble to pillage?

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Bwahahah. Exactly. I've generally heard "rape and pillage" together as one phrase so it's weird to see them separated.

[owlface1.livejournal.com]

lol maybe they realized it would lose a lot of business if they actually encouraged the customers to rape chickens. they can probably get away with pillaging lol

[owlface1.livejournal.com]

actually, either way i would avoid the chicken. Just to be on the safe side.

[jane]

hmmmm... I was curious, so I visited my good friend Wikipedia who says that "Originally from Taiwan, despite the name, it is not Mongolian, and is only very loosely related to barbecue... Mongolian barbecue first appeared in Taiwan in the middle to late 20th century. Although the stir-frying of meats on a large, open surface is supposed to evoke Mongolian cuisine, the preparation actually derives from Japanese-style teppanyaki which was popular in Taiwan at the time. "Mongolian" barbecue is not actually Mongolian at all; for examples of genuine Mongolian food, see buuz or khuushuur. A barbecue in Mongolia is prepared quite differently."

and from there I found a link to All Mongolian Recipes: The Food of the Nomads who say:

What is a "Mongolian Barbeque"?

What some restaurants in the west offer as "Mongolian Barbeque", is completely unknown in Mongolia. In most cases, it means to grill on a hot slab of steel. The ingredients are collected from all of the world, but typically from tropical countries (eg. south east Asia). In fact, this is a japanese method of food preparation called Teppanyaki, which is falsely assigned to Mongolia.

See also: Wikipedia: Teppanyaki

I looked at the recipes they have and they look tasty if heavily leaning towards meat and dairy, which is... what it does? :P

(and then I was in danger of wikisurfing and closed my tabs. :P But yus. Info!)

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Wow! Awesome! The fact that it is not Mongolian at all makes the language even more heinous.

[jane]

the Mongolian Cuisine article says that they've actually opened a store *in* Mongolia. I wonder if they kept the decor?