We have been hearing good things about HuHot for moooonths. Then last week, Tim had offered to bring me some food while I was working and I said I wanted to try HuHot but I didn't think they did take out. They don't. You can't even take home leftovers, but you can go back for as many servings as you like.
We went for lunch since we'd run late the night before and didn't want to cram down food in the 30 minutes they were still open. When you go for lunch, the salad/soup is optional. We didn't have salads so our meal was $7.99. I still didn't feel hungry enough to "get my money's worth" on it though, but its not bad for what is basically a buffet.
This was my first time doing a real mongolian grill style restaurant though I'd seen small ones at chinese buffets. If you don't know, basically you pick up a bowl and then choose your frozen meat. They had chicken, beef, pork, and two types of white fish. I chose beef. After that, you decide on your noodles. The types of noodles were chinese, yakisoba, and pad thai. I chose chinese noodles. After that came a huuuge table of vegetables, pineapple, mushrooms, tofu, etc I wanted to keep it simple so i picked shredded carrot, some diced onion, and baby corn. At last, you reach the sauce station. They have 12 premade sauces of varying heat and 12 'make your own sauce' ingredients. They suggest that you use 5 to 6 ladles of sauce per meal. I used two ladles of hoisin sauce, two of teriyaki, and a ladle of sesame oil.
Once you build your bowl, you are ready to queue for the fantastically awesome round grill. They have this team of about 5 cooks who constantly rotate around this grill top cooking your ingredients. The first guy takes the bowls and dumps them on the grill and does a cleanup of the next spot up. The next guy breaks up the meal into two piles, and makes sure the meat is getting cooked ok. Then there are a couple more guys all working on different meals and the final guy is scraping the mess into the center hole and doing more cleaning. And all the while their spatulas went *ching ching ching*
I think our only major issue with going to this place happened in the grill line. They had gotten backed up a little so the line went all the way around the grill and where we were standing, the sprinkler system was leaking enough to have us be misted slightly.
After your stuff gets grilled, there is a little station at the end of the grill line with chow mein, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and coconut to put on top. I put on both peanuts and sunflower seeds. And that brings me to the reason I think everyone loves this restaurant: Every meal you have there is exactly how you want it! Yeah, I do give kudos to that cooking team for their perfect timing, but if you choose your own ingredients, how can you not like the food it makes?
As for service and atmosphere.... I liked that for the most part the tables were pretty far apart and they'd sort of partitioned off the food bar and grill areas so that if your table was close to them, you wouldn't get bumped by people getting their food. It's a loud restaurant but not to the point where you have to yell at each other over the din. I think it helped that they didn't have any music playing, at least that I noticed.
Our waiter was pretty rehersed in the opening speech for people who haven't been there before, but almost to the point of sounding bored. Later on he got more friendly (ie. calling me sweetie, thanking us again as we left) and he was quick for refills and taking up plates.
I think I would like to go there again, but as far as I've seen, you don't want to try to go on the typical eat out nights. I would also like to be really hungry before going. I forgot to mention that they bring you a bowl of rice to have with your meal and I must remember not to add the rice to my meal if i want to build a second bowl.
Ratings:
Food: +1
Service: +1
Atmosphere: +1
Value: 0
Jan 17, 2008
Jan 5, 2008
Waterfront Seafood - Jan 4, 2008
I have to start off by saying that this was my 4th or 5th time eating at Waterfront. I don't really think it is possible for them to make anything bad by this point.
We had just gotten back from an afternoon of house hunting and Tim was headed to Village Inn when I suggested it. He was up for it, having just recieved a paycheck. We decided on going there at exactly 5PM and pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later. I have learned that this is about the perfect time to head to dinner on a friday night in Polk County if you're hungry.
We got seated immediately but the restaurant got packed shortly after that. We could hear some pretty vocal people at the tables around us talking politics. The caucuses were the previous night, and obviously no one had cooled off yet. One lady was talking anti-abortion, and that was almost annoying.
Tim started out ordering some tuna nigiri (sushi). I'm not a big fan of the uncooked varieties of sushi, even though Waterfront has the freshest, so I went to the bathroom while he ate his "fish jello".
They brought the standard sourdough loaf out and my cup of soup. I ordered lobster bisque which was the special of the night. It was just a straight lobster bisque made with cream, so it was rich but it kind of lacked lobster taste.
For the main course, Tim had a 1/2 portion of blackened mahi with pilaf and vegetables and I had the hurricane shrimp, which is a pasta dish. The shrimp was really interesting because it had a shrimp based honey/herb sauce. I got like an almost sickeningly sweet flavor followed by a kick of spice. According to the menu, the spices are worchestershire, garlic, cayenne, and thyme, but i think maybe there was some rosemary as well. I finished as much as I could before the cayenne built up too much in my mouth. I have gotten much more tolerant of cayenne but, as my mother likes to say, I'm white.
The waitress seemed slightly bored at first but I think she may have been trying to push us along so that others wouldn't have to wait. She was pretty good at refilling drinks before we were finished and getting me to take a box of what I hadn't finished.
All in all, it was another good meal at Waterfront. Total bill: $43.88+tip
Ratings: (+1 is good, 0 is average, and -1 is poor)
Food: +1
Service: +1
Atmosphere: 0
Value: +1
We had just gotten back from an afternoon of house hunting and Tim was headed to Village Inn when I suggested it. He was up for it, having just recieved a paycheck. We decided on going there at exactly 5PM and pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later. I have learned that this is about the perfect time to head to dinner on a friday night in Polk County if you're hungry.
We got seated immediately but the restaurant got packed shortly after that. We could hear some pretty vocal people at the tables around us talking politics. The caucuses were the previous night, and obviously no one had cooled off yet. One lady was talking anti-abortion, and that was almost annoying.
Tim started out ordering some tuna nigiri (sushi). I'm not a big fan of the uncooked varieties of sushi, even though Waterfront has the freshest, so I went to the bathroom while he ate his "fish jello".
They brought the standard sourdough loaf out and my cup of soup. I ordered lobster bisque which was the special of the night. It was just a straight lobster bisque made with cream, so it was rich but it kind of lacked lobster taste.
For the main course, Tim had a 1/2 portion of blackened mahi with pilaf and vegetables and I had the hurricane shrimp, which is a pasta dish. The shrimp was really interesting because it had a shrimp based honey/herb sauce. I got like an almost sickeningly sweet flavor followed by a kick of spice. According to the menu, the spices are worchestershire, garlic, cayenne, and thyme, but i think maybe there was some rosemary as well. I finished as much as I could before the cayenne built up too much in my mouth. I have gotten much more tolerant of cayenne but, as my mother likes to say, I'm white.
The waitress seemed slightly bored at first but I think she may have been trying to push us along so that others wouldn't have to wait. She was pretty good at refilling drinks before we were finished and getting me to take a box of what I hadn't finished.
All in all, it was another good meal at Waterfront. Total bill: $43.88+tip
Ratings: (+1 is good, 0 is average, and -1 is poor)
Food: +1
Service: +1
Atmosphere: 0
Value: +1
Jan 1, 2008
How this works
We're going to tell you about our experiences eating out at restaurants in the Des Moines area. We'll tell you what we got and how much it cost, how the service was, what the atmosphere was like, and whether or not it was a good value. Then, we'll give it a simple plus or minus rating just in case you're too impatient to read.
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