BD’s Mongolian Grill – Burnsville, MN

D.Rough and I were headed into an exhausting weekend, so we thought we’d head out for a date night. I’m a big fan of Mongolian grills, and I had heard about one in Burnsville. Yeah, it’s a little out of town, but it’s a nice drive and I’ve been in that neck of the woods before. Plus I had a coupon – which also helped in our decision!

We got to the place and had to wait a little bit for a table. Nothing major and nothing we didn’t expect on a Friday night. We headed into the bar area and grabbed a cocktail, like we sometimes do. D.Rough got their signature drink which is a Mango Madness (a frozen drink like a high-octane Slurpee). If D didn’t get it, I was going to. It looked delicious. It’s orange vodka, triple sec, mango puree, orange juice, and grenadine – you KNOW this things was delicious. They also have it in the super fast serving machine like in Vegas, so it takes less than 60 seconds to get your drink – cha-ching!
I got the Hawaiian Volcano – a non-frozen drink with Absolut Mandarin, amaretto, pineapple juice, cranberry juice, and grenadine. I liked mine way better than D.Rough’s since it took me back to my college drinking days. And yes, I took photos of the ingredients on the menu so I could recreate this at home in a five gallon bucket. I love my girly drinks.

The inside of this place is much brighter than most Mongolian grills I’ve been to (And I’ve been to a few…). In fact, it’s borderline sports bar-ish with a couple of big flat screen TVs showing various sports. Thankfully, it isn’t a dbag-sort of sports bar feel. D.Rough says it’s more like Buffalo Wild Wings – I hope this isn’t an insult, since we both really like BWW. But it’s got that kind of feel – even the menus, signs, and fonts reminded me a little B-dubs. And a lot of the appetizers at BD’s are chicken related, including some buffalo wings, which made me smile. Again, not a bad thing at all – I’m just letting you know what you’ll see when you get there.
We got seated in about 15 minutes, so it wasn’t a bad wait at all. The waiter came immediately to our table and asked if we had been there before. We told him we hadn’t and he explained it all for us. Walked us through the menu and everything! I ordered an Orange Fanta since my girly drink got finished before I headed to the table – sometimes that happens. We ordered an appetizer since we were really hungry today. Potstickers sounded really good, even though we had to narrow it down from about 5 appetizers we wanted (that’s a good sign). While waiting for our ap, we headed to the soup/salad bar since it’s all included in the price. We didn’t want to load up, so we got some small, simple salads. The soups looked good, but we weren’t in a soup mood. Everything on the salad bar looked fresh and tasty and there were plenty of things to choose from.

When we got back to the table with our salads, I got mocked for making mine too pretty. It was totally accidental, but seriously, my salad could have been in a cook book photo.
The salad was fine and fresh and no complaints. The potstickers came out about the same time as we finished up our salads – perfect timing! The potstickers were delicious. Crispy on the outside, hot and flavorful in the middle. Sometimes these things get rubbery, but these weren’t at all. The dipping sauce had a little zing to it, which made it all better. I think we chose wisely on the appetizer.
The waiter brought us our red bowls, which we were to take to the buffet line and fill with things for the cooks to stir-fry for us. The bowls are smaller than I’m used to at many Mongolian places, but I didn’t take this as a bad thing. This meant I got to come back for multiple bowls of differing things (Now THAT’s a silver lining). There’s a display on the wall with all kinds of different cards on it with sample recipes on them for people who aren’t adventurous. So if you want pad thai, you can make it. If you want beef broccoli, you can make it. If you want sweet and sour pork, you can make it. It’s a good idea when people aren’t used to these kinds of places.

We strolled up to the meat buffet (I like the sound of that…). Here’s where we got a little confused. The sign above the meats/seafood says something like “choose one meat”. I didn’t know if they restricted it or if that was just how they said to pick a meat. So I ignored it and went with two different kinds of chicken they had on the buffet. We moved to the next station, which was all vegetable-type things. I loaded up my bowl with peppers, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, zucchini, broccoli and probably some other things. If you look confused for even a second, there is a staff person right there making sure you get straightened out – not in a pushy way either.

I was unsure about the sauce area and a girl stepped up and told me how the sauces were organized and how to put sauces and seasonings into the small black bowl provided. It gets spicier from left to right and finish with the seasonings on top of the sauces. Perfect. I got it all put together and walked to the giant circular flat-top grill. One of the cooks told me where to stand and took my bowl for coking. He was very charismatic and loved his job. Singing songs on the speaker system and joking/flirting (tastefully) with the ladies in line. Tall red-headed guy – you’ll recognize him if you see him – made waiting in line fun. Also fun is the fact BD’s has various games at the counter while you wait. Connect Four, Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots, and a couple of other things like a pink magic 8-ball. The food gets cooked most of the way, then your sauce is dumped on to finish it off.

The food was delicious, actually. Both D.Rough’s and mine. Everything was perfectly cooked and there was very little gristle or fat in the meat. And because you get to do the sauces and seasonings yourself, it turns out pretty well on the spice level. I’m a veteran Mongolian griller, so I know my spices and sauces. It was perfect. So perfect, I went up for a second time to the buffet.

One of the funny things about this Mongolian grill is they are catering to the extra white suburban crowd (I don’t mean that completely in a bad way). If you can get boring eaters into your restaurant, especially in suburbia, then you’ll make out like a bandit. BD’s does this by putting pasta on the buffet, so you can literally make up a bowl of penne pasta with meatball and add alfredo or marinara sauce to the bowl. They’ll cook it right up for you. Odd, but probably a good strategy (that I didn’t exercise, sorry). The restaurant also seemed to be pimping Octoberfest, so they had odd German fare on the buffet as well including sausages (sauerbraten – awesome), and some German sauces.
The second plate I made was similar to the first, but I changed up the sauces a little bit and got different meat. It was delicious, as well. However, I forgot to take a photo until I was most of the way through it – I was a little excited to have more. Hahaha.

We had a tough time deciding on dessert, since there are some really awesome looking ones. We were really full though and all of them sounded like too much. So we went with the old stand-by: a giant rootbeer float. Everybody loves them, and they fill in the gaps you still have in your stomach. This one was no different, especially since D.Rough and I split it. And I got to take home the souvenir giant mug – awesome!
A couple of comments about the atmosphere: the music on the speaker system was an amazingly awesome flashback to the 80’s. Duran Duran, Bonnie Tyler, whoever sings Smooth Operator – stuff like that. The guy cooking food was rocking pretty hard – thankfully he had a great voice and could pull it off. There are also lots of tables that can be pulled together for larger parties and families. There were a lot of groups here, which is probably a great place for them to go since you don’t have to wait for your food or anything. The staff were super helpful and the manager was working the room, making sure everyone had what they needed. We will be back to this place.

And to convince you to go to BD’s for dinner, the company sent me a PDF for my readers to print out and get $5 off a meal there. It’s a really good deal and I’m hoping you guys will use it. It’s only good until November 15, 2011, so print it and use it!!!

Top 5 things about BD’s
1. Fresh food and lots of it (you’re the assembler, so it’s hard to screw up)
2. Lots of delicious appetizers to choose from
3. Fantastic girly drinks!
4. Super helpful staff
5. Games at the counter so you don’t get bored

Bottom 5 things
1. Totally forgot to get one of their flavored teas or lemonades
2. Confusing sign on the meat area (which I ignored and now am probably in violation of some health code)
3. The sauce area can get messy, but usually the staff are right there cleaning up spilled stuff – just be careful when you set your bowl down since you’ll pick up all kinds of stuff
4. It can add up if you get appetizers AND dessert – just a heads up
5. Sauces may have had MSG (not confirmed, but D.Rough got a MSG-like headache afterwards)

www.gomongo.com