HuHot Mongolian Grill

12675 Olive Blvd

St. Louis (Creve Coeur)

http://www.huhot.com

I’ve been to Mongolian barbecue places before, not in a while. This was a spur of the moment choice, Doug and Rob invited me to join them. HuHot is actually a franchise, based in, obviously (sarcasm), Montana.

There’s a couple of dozen of these restaurants mostly in the middle of the U.S. Kentucky, Tennessee and Maryland? Nope. Springfield Mo? Yes.

I’ve probably been to this style of restaurant less than most of you, my loyal fans, but bear with me as I cover the basics for the novices.

The Place:

A standalone, large and colorful. Trademarked logos on the signage and doors/walls/windows. Inside, the upper walls are decorated by hand painted murals. Laura Blaker, a Missoula based artist travels to each new HuHot to paint its unique murals. In Creve Coeur, there is an imposing 20+ foot snaky, two legged dragon, yellow with red rings and eyes. The murals really are quite striking.

It’s a large place and pretty busy.  This Monday lunch saw it filled with office workers much like the three of us, but mostly more attractive. Rob and Doug had been there several times and knew the drill.

The lunch special is an all-you-can-eat stir-fry buffet. There are three buffet lines, one with raw meats and noodles, the next with fresh veggies, etc. and the last with a couple dozen vats of sauces.

We were shown a table, asked about drinks (water all around) and offered appetizers of Rangoons or egg rolls. Doug asked for three of the latter. He and Rob also asked for plain rice, which I thought was an unusual 'optional'(not part of the buffet) item, since rice is a staple and very cheap, costing about 1 yuan per ton (1 Yuan= around 15 U.S. cents).
We headed toward the lines.

The Food:

The meats were chopped and frozen. At first this bothered me, but I thought the better of it and went on. I chose mostly chicken and a little turkey. I added a plop or two of yakisoba noodles (there are three other kinds of noodles available see http://www.huhot.com/Menu/Create_a_Meal for a complete list of buffet items.) I went nuts at the veggies, peppers, lots of multicolored peppers, a few tomatoes and bean sprouts. I tried to build a taste profile in my head to make sure I didn’t mix contrasting flavors. My bowl was already spilling over when I got to the sauces. There’s a couple dozen choices, you just ladle on four or five scoops, mix or match. An experienced customer’s blend could potentially be quite elaborate. I kept it simple and mild, choosing the tame Samurai Teriyaki. I figured I could always turn up the volume later.

Rob and Doug had filled their bowls as well, as veterans of the place they didn’t need as much think time. We took our bowls up to the cooking station and handed them over. In the center was a seven foot round steel cooking contraption with a hole in the middle. Two or three cooks could easily fit around it. They squirt a little oil on the surface, like a griddle and plop your bowl right on it. I spend a lot of time behind a stove at home so watching the process right in front of my eyes was not as big a spectacle as it might be for some people.

In a couple of minutes of tossing and turning, the steaming piles were scooped onto plates and handed over.

At the pickup area there were vats/crocks of crunchies, chow mein noodles, glass noodles, some crushed nuts, etc. I added a few chow mein noodles. Our water and egg rolls were waiting for us at the table.

I took my first taste, decided it was indeed quite tame, and sprinkled on some soy sauce. By the time I sank my fork into the next bite I noticed fast-eating Doug, the star-nosed mole*. Even self-handicapped by using chopsticks, he was about half done with his. By the time I was halfway through mine, he’d already built a second helping and gone through the line. Rob debated a second plate, instead he took some of the white rice they’d ordered separately and stirred it into the remaining sauce and food chunks on his plate. Doug still finished ahead of me.

 I was very pleased with the meal. I had chosen smartly, except for the tomatoes, they’re better on a salad or pizza than in a stir fry. The sauce was splendid, a little sesame oil, soy sauce and sherry. I’ll probably go up a notch next time though there wasn’t anything at all wrong with what I had.
The little egg rolls were quite good, the sweet sauce they served with them was just right. 

Doug’s second round was based on recommendation cards, a thick deck of which can be found on every table. Tried and true combination suggestions. He chose one called ‘Vampire Killer’, a blend which I think included the chain's trademarked  “Kung Pao...Yow!” sauce. He likes it hot, really, really hot. 

Our water was refreshed often and emptied plates taken swiftly. When it came time to pony up, Doug grabbed the check and handed his card to the waiter. I objected loudly and violently, putting up quite the fuss. (Lie). Doug's such a nice guy. 

 Summary: 

I believe the lunch buffet cost eight bucks, though I can't be sure since I didn't pay my fair share.  The food was really good, and the selection was great. I've not been to very many Mongolian style buffets, so I can't really compare it to much else. I really just cannot say anything bad about the place at all. I'd said the meat being frozen was a little bothersome at first, until I considered the alternative, raw. I'd much rather stir fry small chunks of frozen meat than raw stuff that had been sitting out for a while. Besides, most of the meat I consume at home comes from our freezer. We're almost an empty nest, even bacon wouldn't stay good in the fridge for as long as it takes us to finish a pound. So I'm okay with the frozen meat. You?

______________________________

Star nosed mole

* Star-nosed mole. Considered the fastest eating mammal in the animal kingdom. “. . . taking as short as 120 milliseconds (average: 227 milliseconds) to identify and consume individual food items. Its brain decides in the ultra short time of 8 ms if a prey is comestible or not.” (Wikipedia)
I've called Doug this before, his family got a kick out of it, so now it sticks. It's not intended as an insult, just an observation that aside from the occasional prisoner, Doug eats faster than most other creatures I am aware of.

Canton Inn

205 W Sunshine St
Springfield, Mo.

I don’t often offer a review of a restaurant that I’ve not recently been to, but this place merits a distinct exception. First some background for those of you NOT from/in/around Springfield Mo.

I lived in Springfield from 1985 through 2001. Most of my adult life in fact, for nearly as long as I lived in my original home town in Kentucky. So perhaps I’m a bit biased. Springfield, if not uniquely famous for anything else, is at least very well known for Chinese restaurants. Don’t believe me? Well, the New York Times does.
There are lots of Chinese joints in the Queen City of the Ozarks, noticeably so. Even non-Chinese places serve Springfield style cashew chicken there.

Many of the places come and go, change locations, ownership and names. Several have been around for a long time. Some are great, some are merely so-so. At any rate, Springfield has more Chinese restaurants, per capita, than any other city in the U.S.

I’m not a huge fan of Cashew Chicken itself, though I’ve had a lot of it. I prefer sweet and sour. But that’s not the point.

According to Angel, Canton Inn, near the corner of Sunshine and South Campbell, has the best eggrolls in the city, which equates to the best anywhere in the world. I can’t disagree. It’s also pretty cheap as you can see here.

So when she announced that her and Adam were heading down to see the new grandbaby, of course I asked for take-out. We do this whenever anyone heads down that way.

Sure enough when she got home she was packing a grocery-sized bag full of wontons, eggrolls and crab Rangoons.

The Chinese places in Jefferson and south St. Louis county areas don’t often offer wontons, and none of them make a great eggroll. Canton Inn’s offerings are not only very good, they travel well. She’d also brought a sweet and sour chicken meal in a box. I had that for dinner on Sunday, but wasn’t too impressed. The sauce had congealed and even the microwave would not cure that. The rice was, well, rice.

On Monday I decided to go nuts. I took the remaining wontons, rangoons and eggroll, laid them out on a cookie sheet, and stuck them into the oven, which was set to about 225 degrees. I then thawed and chopped up some chicken breasts and thighs. I also started the rice cooker.

I make rice and chicken a lot. Much tougher and messier is the other stuff, the deep-fried sides.

I breaded the chicken chunks in my usual blend of flour, corn meal, garlic powder and pepper. I filled the big skillet with a little oil, about an eighth of an inch or so, and set the thermometer in it to keep a consistent temperature range. The chunks are small so they have to be watched very closely. Over-cooking or too-high temperature will ruin them.  I made two skillets full, some I flash-glazed in bottled sweet and sour sauce, the rest I left plain. These bowls were also set into the oven. Angel has her own Springfield style cashew sauce recipe and would make some once everything else was done.

I filled up one bowl of plain rice for Adam and set it in the oven as well.

To finish up the rest of the rice I added chopped bell peppers, onions, celery, slivers of carrot, a chopped fried egg and some shreds of leftover turkey (dark meat preferred). Stir that together with a couple dashes of soy sauce and you end up with a pretty decent pile of un-fried rice.

I also steamed up some frozen pot stickers. Angel likes them, I think they’re okay. I can make a decent gyoza (pot-sticker favored in Japan) myself, but it takes a lot of time and is also pretty messy.

By the time all this was done, the eggroll, wontons and rangoons were hot and ready to serve.  Dinner time.

The wontons were crispy and filled with just a little meat, the rangoons, also still crispy were packed with what appeared to be actual crab  meat and a dollop of sweet cream cheese. With the Canton Inn sides the whole meal was dreamy.

As I said before, there are a lot of Chinese dining choices in Springfield. Some big and fancy sit-down and tablecloth places, many are small, hole-in-the-wall affairs. Canton Inn is small, old, and hardly sparkly. There is inside dining, less than ten tables, so it’s cramped, and it’s always busy. The service is fast, the staff is always bustling, and there are typically lines waiting at the counter for take-out. It’s not the biggest, the shiniest, nor is it necessarily the best. It’s not even a buffet, but it is certainly very good and very much representative of Springfield-style Chinese. The sides travel very well and are always top-notch.

Springfield Missouri gave us a Wild Bill Hickok shootout, Bob Barker, Brad Pitt, Bass Pro Shops, Route 66, The Ozark Jubilee, and many other reasonably memorable and significant other things. It is home to the largest public school district in the state and to Missouri State University.

Without a doubt though, the most important item to ever emerge from my first adopted home town is the Chinese style food. In my reasoned, expert opinion, it is better than anywhere else I’ve been, including San Francisco, Japan and Korea, and most definitely markedly better than any you’ll find in Maryland, D.C., Florida, Texas, Illinois and Kentucky. (other places I’ve lived).

If you ever go through there, or know someone that will be heading that way, I strongly advise you to try it out, and Canton Inn is as good a place to start as any.