“The most disgusting food. Ever,” begins Tim Wu’s article for Slate on the joys of eating in Mongolia. Wu doesn’t sound easily disgusted–he’s apparently a pro at gagging down deep fried scorpion, duck brains, snake blood and semi-live octopus tentacles. But even he had trouble with the acidic, rock-hard cheese, endless mutton and fermented horse milk of Mongolia. (Though mutton dumplings and mutton mixed with noodles “can sometimes be good,” he admits, likewise the fermented horse’s milk “when distilled to a clear liquor”.)
Wu’s description of slaughtering a whole sheep for breakfast truly disturbed me: “As we went into a local ger to eat breakfast, I noticed that the sheep’s head had been removed, and the internal organs were being poured into a giant pot, the same way you might empty a can of beans…I’m sorry to say that we had to watch the whole mess boiling for a while on the dung fire, yielding bubbles of brownish-gray scum. Afterward, a giant steaming bowl of internal organs was placed before us with some ceremony.” Needless to say, Wu did not find it very tasty.
Looks like we probably won’t have to endure sheep organs for our future Mongolian meal, though–seems the only “Mongolian” restaurant in London is this chain, which serves dishes like Genghis Murphy’s Mousse.
UPDATE: The Mongolian Barbeque in Covent Garden is closed for refurbishment, but Little Lamb in Chinatown serves Mongolian (but not really Mongolian) hotpot. Thanks Charmaine!
Charmaine wrote,
I believe Mongolian Barbecue has closed, but the second closest thing is Little Lamb on Shaftesbury Avenue who CLAIMS to serve Mongolian hotpot. I say claim because there’s not much in the way to distinguish it from ordinary Chinese hotpot, and they took the salted tea with milk off the menu after a few days of opening!
Link | September 29th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Su-Lin wrote,
Such a shame that the only Mongolian place I knew of in London (it used to be in Leicester Square) closed about 9 years ago. They even served tea with yak butter!
Link | September 29th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Andrea wrote,
Hi, thanks for the tip, wasn’t expecting to come across someone who knows about Mongolian food! The so-called Mongolian hotpot sounds much more appealing than that fake Mongolian barbecue, even if it’s not too different from Chinese. And I didn’t know about salted tea with milk but have just Googled it and found a recipe–maybe we’ll make our own!
(I really like your blog by the way, and hence am just about to add you to our blogroll. Your onsen tamago entry from April has inspired me to look into doing a series of posts about breakfasts from around the world at some point.)
Link | September 29th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
matthew wrote,
Hi there Su-lin,
Yes Mongolian options do seem a bit limited. Perhaps we should ask the Mongolian embassy where to go!
I just saw the review of Sufi on your blog, this is actually somewhere we’ve been planning to return to possibly for our Iranian meal. We had a great meal there a while back, glad to hear you liked it too. Will have to follow the blog via RSS
Link | September 29th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Charles wrote,
I have to say that the Mongolian Barbeque place was really underwhelming – I was really excited to go there but the food was bland and the atmosphere was quiet cheesy – we would have been better off going to TGI Fridays round the corner!
Link | October 31st, 2008 at 11:11 am