The Weekday Parent Date

Well, a Wednesday has come and gone and another day of the weekend parent date with the child.  I know many of you have all different days that this date occurs, but for me it is on a Wednesday.  And unfortunately, with barely two hours to be able to do everything I want to with my daughter, this often leads to doing a meal.  I suppose there are some of you out there who are content doing the same thing every week, but I love to give different types of experiences to my daughter.  I was a child who hated doing everything the same all the time and wanted to try something different.  And so I didn't want to end up at the same place every week with my child.

This weeks Wednesday journey took me to the Mongolian Bar-B-Que Pan Asia on 17th Street in Newport beach.  It does look a little odd in the way that it's situated in a strip mall but it does give that old world feeling the moment you step in the restaurant.  They give you water and free green tea the minute you sit down and then a menu.  Just don't expect all you can drink items other than this on the menu.

It's not that there is a lot of variant on the menu itself.  You can add egg rolls, soup, pot stickers, fried won-tons and a plethora of other amenities to the dish, but primarily you are there for the BBQ.  Whether you want all you can eat, or you want just a one time serving, they give you the choice of various different frozen meats.  They sit a little large in the bowl so I suggest if you want more veggies in your BBQ that you take the green tea that they gave you and use it to smash the meat down in order to get more in your BBQ.  Then you go to the counter and really get your variety of onions, peppers, cabbage, corn, pineapple, cilantro, sprouts, etc.  This is where you get to choose everything that marinates on the flat BBQ plate that they fry it up on.

Finally you get to decide what kinds of spices you are going to put on the BBQ.  These can include red pepper spice, lobster, bbq sauce and various spice levels that they have as accents.  Finally you can decide whether you want a dash of garlic powder or sesame seeds to go with it.  Now you get to watch them go into action with a flat board moving it across the hot almost wok like cooking surface.  Once they dish it off into your bowl you take it back to your table and they serve it with rice and bread pockets.  Don't forget to read your fortune cookies.

As you are looking for places that you can experience and not just sit down and have a meal, this is a fun place to take your children and give them the opportunity to experience something a little different, Pan-Asian style.