What’s Not Best: Small Bowls at Mongolian Barbeques
Just had lunch at a Mongolian barbeque in town. I really like those places. However, one thing has always stood out to me: the bowls they give you are way to small for the purpose.
For those who aren’t familiar with Mongolian barbeque, here’s how it works: You go through a buffet to fill up a bowl with meat, vegetables, and sauce, and then give it to the cooks who barbeque it on a Mongolian griddle. It’s great.
But the bowl is smaller than your typical cereal bowl (sorry for the image quality–it was dark and I took this with my iPhone, and apparently wasn’t very steady):
So it always overflows when you’ve added what you want:
Solution: Conform to the way users actually behave and provide bigger bowls. I’m sure there are reasons behind the smaller bowls, but I’d advocate thinking first from the user’s perspective.
In the meantime, you can use two bowls if necessary: one for the vegatbles, and one for the meat. But that’s twice as much to carry through the buffet.
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Follower of Christ. Husband of one, father of three. Former director of strategy at Desiring God. This blog exists to help equip Christians in good works, because that's what productivity is really about.
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Our Mongolian BBQ charges a different rate depending on the number of bowls you use. However, I’ve learned that with some good stacking practices you can get quite a bit in the bowl.
I once saw someone do something quite clever to add to the available volume. He used zucchini to make sidewalls on his bowl. This helped him stack better.
Assuming it’s all-you-can-eat, I prefer small bowls. Smaller portions mean I’m able to go back for more more times. This makes me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.
I always feel like an idiot when I pay for all I can eat if all I can eat is only one or two helpings.
I guess what I’m saying is that small bowls are this user’s preference.
Clearly the small bowls are to keep people from taking to much food. Our BBQ doesn’t charge extra for an extra bowl. I always use two.
TWO bowls for the MEAT. Vegetables?!? Come on now!
I’m living in Mongolia right now and let me tell you – - Mongolian bbq is a lie! It doesn’t exist out here. I don’t know how we got it but it’s not Mongolian. Let me tell you, when I first got here people looked at me like I was crazy when I was asking where the Mongolian BBQs were.
PS. Sorry, just in case you were curious where Mongolian BBQ came from, my best guess is a national dish called “tsuivan”. I say guess because it’s only ingredients, every time, are mutton, chunks of sheep fat, and carrots. No chicken, no beef, no sprouts, and certainly no sauce of any kind; just salt. Here’s a picture:
http://accel6.mettre-put-idata.over-blog.com/1/15/34/84/Ulan-Bator/Bouffe/DSCF7507.JPG
Actually, I thought of the smaller bowls as being part of “what’s best”. It’s all-you-can-eat (at least where I’ve gone) and I always see people waste so much food with their last bowl. It’s easy for my eyes to be bigger than my stomach at a buffet, so this cuts down on potential waste. And by having a smaller bowls, I can try different meats, sauces, etc without mixing them all together!
It’s all about the pack. Pack it down tight and you’ll get your fill. Skillful packing and meat placement is the name of the game.
z
The entire “create your own food arrangement in a bowl” concept is a crock. You go out to a restaurant and instead of the chef going, “hey, this is what works well together” and a waiter bringing it to you, you have to go “I wonder if this’ll taste nice together”. And then inevitably we flood the plate with too many tastes and flavours and everyone’s food tastes the same. A bit like when you put more than 7 or 8 different jellybeans in your mouth at once.
This post is old, but I’m just now reading it
Did anyone ever consider that the small portions make it more efficient for the guy who has to cook all that food for so many people? I could just imagine how I’d feel as a customer waiting in line behind the guy who has a punchbowl-sized portion of food stacked to the ceiling, knowing that this guy’s gonna bottleneck the entire cooking process…
Peter: That’s something I haven’t thought of!
I like the small bowls. Our local MB is all-you-can eat, so I like to try a whole bunch of different combinations. I wind up making 5-6 trips.
One thing that I do is take the frozen slabs of meat and fan them around the inside of the bowl. If put in the bowl first, this creates a larger bowl. This is hard to describe but next time I am at Khan’s I’ll take a picture.