If you’re looking for a welcoming place to hang out with family or friends while enjoying a variety of tasty foods at an all you can eat buffet, Golden Lion Mongol’s BBQ, formerly Golden Palace Mongolian BBQ, is exactly what you’re looking for.
This Mongolian BBQ joint is located just off the 210 Freeway, between E. Colorado and Rosemead Boulevard. If you go for dinner, the place is all you can eat for only $11.95 for adults and $6.95 for kids. The lunchtime special runs just around $8. Unfortunately, drinks are not included in the price.
Golden Lion offers in-restaurant dining, as well as a to-go service. If you decide to get food to go, you can load up a bowl for just $8. The parking is free, which is always a plus.
The process of preparing your meal is the same as most other Mongolian BBQ restaurants.
First, you choose your meat, vegetables, noodles and the sauce or marinade to have it cooked in. After you choose what you’d like to pile onto your plate, a cook prepares your BBQ on the grill. After your food has been cooked, they place it on a new plate and they also include steamed rice, so if you’re not into noodles, you can skip them because rice is available. There’s a salad section and dessert section as well.
The food selection is very broad, especially since each customer can mix and match what they’d like. Their meats selection includes beef, chicken, lamb, turkey and pork. Their vegetables consist of zucchinis, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, green onions and cabbage.
The sauces, that can be combined any number of ways, include chopped garlic, curry sauce, oyster sauce, BBQ sauce and sesame oil. They also offer hot sauce and jalapenos for those of you who enjoy spicy condiments in your food.
Their dessert selection wasn’t much, only offering green and red Jell-O, and orange slices.
The meal also comes with free appetizers that are brought to the table. The starters include a cup of soup, hot tea, fried wontons, egg roles, pita chips and pocket bread, which is perfect for stuffing your meat and vegetables in if you enjoy eating them all together. At the end of your meal, you also get fortune cookies.
The waitresses are very friendly and welcoming, which makes it an enjoyable atmosphere to have lunch or dinner.
It was my first time trying Mongolian BBQ and I must say, I was very satisfied. I also noticed that not only were the waitresses friendly, but they are very attentive, very good at refilling your drinks. Another pleasant thing to see as a customer of a restaurant is that the staff was very good at maintaining the place. They were constantly cleaning and wiping down tables.
The customers are made up of a wide variety of people, from families,to an elderly couple, to groups of teenagers. It was pretty busy in my opinion, and one of the reasons I think so is because there aren’t many Mongolian BBQ places around that aren’t inside malls.
A few tips for those of you who have never tried Mongolian BBQ before, add a lot of sauce to your meat so it doesn’t taste so bland. Remember, you’re adding it before it hits the grill so you should add enough to make it soak through your meat selection.
