296. Kublai Khan Mongolian Barbeque

Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. This is how much I know about the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. What about the food Mongolians eat? I browsed through my memory collections and stopped at 2 years ago, a folder which was recorded as Qingdao.

It happened that there was a huge scale food festival going on then. The scene of Mongolian sweets was vividly registered in my memory because they were all made from goat milk and they were not cheap. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of it. (I would not know that I will become an avid flogger today.) But, I took a photo of the barbequed mutton skewers which is an indispensable dish in Mongolian cuisine (see below). We may be carnivores but we are not 'flesh eaters'. We sent the skewers back to the pits.

A few of us went to Kublai Khan at Park Mall for dinner. Kublai Khan, the name suggested Mongolian fare.

But, there was cold seafood with only choices of prawns, mussels and crayfishs. They failed to master the art of seduction. I did not attempt any, comments reserved.

Fruit salad with strips of lobster meat that could easily slip through your teeth. Fruit salad, that is it!

Choose your ingredients. Chicken or beef (no pork, no lard). Small porcelain urns of sauces, containing ginger sauce, garlic sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil for your meat.

Be treated to a spectacular Mongolian BBQ show. I was given access to go into the cooking area. No spatula, all they need was a pair of long chopsticks. The manager explained to me that the metal furnace-alike had 4 cooking spots in the 4 geographical directions. 2 were shut and the other 2 were active. The chef is able to control the degree of cooking by continuously shifting on the metal plate.

And.....swoop....the chef scooped up the food with his 'magical' chopsticks into a bowl, ready for collection at the 'OUT' counter. As the sauces and ingredients were up to diner's preference, I felt to call it a Mongolian fare is not so distinct. What Kublai Khan is selling is their Mongolian style of cooking.

Mushroom soup in pastry bowl. She is 'hot'. I only managed to get her on our 3rd encounter. Her skin was crispy and she wore a butter fragrance. I said I met a lady with bad intentions. Just like those spy girls. 'Ho Kuah Bo Ho Jiak'. Soup was diluted and tasted bland.

Baked seafood. The ones that I will most probably applaud for.

Japanese corner. All the chilled stuffs.

Salmon was alright. The chuka was a tad too hard to chew. I liked the macaroni salad. Tasted like mixed with Thai sweet and sour sauce.


Tom Yam soup. Let me first declare for this photo - 'what you see is not what you get'. Don't make a police report for the missing straw mushrooms because they have gone visiting their neighbour. Again, it was a disappointing bowl of soup. The tom yam soup lacked the punch. Not shiok leh....and the table conversation shifted to the shiok tom yam soup at Thailand's roadside stalls.


Desserts corner. I didn't like the presentation, do you? I saw a man having problems with pouring out honey for his herbal jelly.

The ice-cream freezer was too cold and it was hard to scoop the ice-cream. After having had scooped and tasted the ice-cream, I was not consoled.

Chocolate fondue. Only grapes, strawberries and marshmallows. The strawberries were very sour and cut a tad too small in size. My companion suggested making a comparison to her index finger. If so, the photo will probably suggest a scale with the strawberry to finger, 1:2. The chocolate was not smooth.

Some people are contended with a simple life.

Some people preferred a colourful life with lots of things to explore.

What's your take?

There was a cooked Chinese food and teppanyaki corner, which I didn't attempt any. Each of us paid $29 for the buffet. In my opinion, Kublai Khan serves a wider range of food compared to some other buffets but the quality of food was not quite on par to the price paid. Even though, the focus should be on Mongolian cuisine but the identity is not strong. Limelight was stolen by the rest of the cuisines which were placed foremost to the diners.

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Kublai Khan Mongolian Barbeque
9 Penang Mall
#04-01
Singapore 238459