Posts Tagged ‘Menggu Grill’
My wife and I went to Asia Garden for the first time this afternoon and were not disappointed. The combination of quality of food plus the friendliness and the price has made Asia Garden our favourite restaurant.
Asia Garden, primarily termed as a buffet, includes a “Mongolian Grill”, a lot like Menggu Grill previously. I asked our friendly server Vivian to assist me with the grill as this was our first visit to their establishment. She took a stainless steel bowl and added fresh, cooled, uncooked ingredients to my specifications. The ingredients ranged from rice noodles, peanuts, shrimp, bok choy, squid, pork, THEN with a warning, very sparingly, Mongolian hot sauce mixed with oyster sauce and lastly, a curry sauce to top it off. Vivian then took the heaping bowl to the chef who grilled the mixture and in no time she returned to our table with the steaming hot food.
The Mongolian hot sauce is hot! I am accustomed to warnings of hot sauce turning out to be mild for my taste – not in this case! The dish was excellent with every ingredient having a distinct flavour and yet the combination of sauces lingering in the background.
The price includes the usual Chinese buffet but after my Mongolian dish I was quite satisfied. My wife ate from the buffet and said everything was very fresh and good also.
For the two of us, including a $3 tip, the bill was under $20.
Asia Garden, next to Visions
2 – 3363 Dunmore Road SE
Menggu Grill is back, well not really, but it might as well be. This time around the new owners are calling the restaurant “Asia Garden”.
Is a change of name, but the same style of food a good business venture or not? Probably not, because as most people in Medicine Hat are aware of, Menggu Grill had big issues regarding breaching health regulations some time ago as described on our Menggu Grill Closes post, and after struggling afterward, they were forced to close down. Even the restaurant which existed before the Menggu Grill, named Fortune Gardens had health issues previously. I think most people have given up hope for restaurants in that building, but who knows, maybe these guys can set it right!
Even though Asia Garden is run by different owners, and is a bit different in terms of food and style, I wonder if people will be persuaded by the new name even though the building has been previously plagued with health problems.
Menggu Grill Storefront - Photo via MHRestaurants.com
As some of you may know, Menggu Grill has closed its doors (May 20th, 2009). Word is though, that the building has been sold – to who or what is unclear. To those of you not in the know, it was revealed several months ago that the Mongolian grill cuisine-style restaurant had been shut down by a representative at the Alberta Health Services (then called the Palliser Health Region) after a health inspection was carried out on October 30th, 2009. It was detailed in the report that rodent (mice) droppings were found in several locations including the buffet and food preparation area. The mice were apparently going in through a hole in the wall. There was also several other health problems noted in the report (linked to below).
After that, and a couple Medicine Hat News articles later, the owner, Andy Chen re-opened the restaurant as they had cleaned everything up, made all changes as laid out in the reports and got the go ahead by a follow-up inspection. Since then, it has been operating with a “clean bill of health” with no problems reported. The closing can probably be attributed (mostly) to the incident as many previous patrons presumptively did not return even after it was reported to be cleaned. But really, that is just speculation on my part.