Grub Scout: Diners get in on the action at Genghis Grill

Genghis Grill, which made its Knoxville debut just a few weeks ago in Turkey Creek, touts itself as a Mongolian stir-fry restaurant. Rather than being a subcategory of Asian cuisine, “Mongolian” refers to an exhibition style of cooking modeled after a centuries-old legend. That legend holds that 12th-century Mongol warriors, led by Genghis Khan, heated their shields over open fires to grill their food on the fields of battle.

At Genghis Grill, diners interactively participate in the building of their own stir-fry meals, which are served in large red bowls. But first, the greeter hands you a stainless steel bowl for assembling your ingredients, and then your server leads you into a queue, where you get to custom assemble the raw components of your meal, which are laid out in a food-bar-style series of stations.

Step one: choose your protein. Take your pick of 12 different raw meats including chicken, marinated steak, turkey, ham and shrimp. At the second station, you add a dash of a seasoning; again, there are about a dozen to choose from. Next, you can pick from more than 30 veggies, which range from traditional salad-style toppings to tofu, mandarin oranges, bok choy, bamboo shoots and baby corn. At step four, you splash on a ladle’s worth of one of a dozen sauces, which range in degrees of spiciness.

Adventurous types can totally go freelance and assemble any combination of ingredients as they see fit. Or you can do what The Spouse and I did and pick one of 12 signature bowl recipes, which are explained step by step on little plastic cards.

For example, my selection — the seafood-based Firecracker Bowl — is meal No. 5, so I simply followed the instructions on that recipe card, choosing the recommended ingredients as I went along, each container of which was clearly labeled with the numeral five.

What isn’t clearly communicated, but what I eventually figured out, is that you can add as much of the meats and veggies as your bowl can reasonably hold, despite what the recipe card recommends. You pay a flat $9.99 per bowl, regardless of weight.

Meanwhile, The Spouse assembled the beef-based Mongo BBQ bowl, and after step four, we handed our creations to a grill worker, informed him of our choices of starch (we picked fried and steamed rice over pasta, tortillas or udon noodles) and watched as our bowls and rice selections were dumped out onto a massive circular stir-fry grill. Everyone’s meals are separated by long wooden sticks, and workers also use the sticks to mix the ingredients and ensure they are heated evenly.

I thought the whole assemble-your-own-meal concept was an intriguing gimmick, but I honestly didn’t care for standing in line for 10 minutes for the honor of picking my own ingredients. I go out to dinner to be waited on and served, and if I want to do prep work, I’ll stay home and cook.

Nevertheless, we were still very pleased with the results. The quality of the ingredients was more than satisfactory, and they certainly blended well within our respective recipes. My scallops and shrimp popped with spicy enhancements, and The Spouse’s beef stir-fry was bathed in smoky barbecue flavor. Plus our meals did arrive smokin’ hot from the grill within moments of completion.

With all that in mind, I would recommend that you at least try Genghis Grill once and decide for yourself whether the participatory experience inspires feelings of fun and adventure or elicits the wrath of Khan.

© 2011, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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