El Camino Mongolian BBQ
- Hours:
Mon-Fri 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
Mon-Fri 5:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Sat 11:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Sun 5:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. - Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Private Lot
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Delivers: No
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: No
- Good for: Lunch, Dinner
- Alcohol: None
125 reviews
San Jose, CA
"ABSOLUTELY love this place. I'm a sucker for spicy food and their Nuclear sauce on the chicken wing (I'm not a big fan of white meat on…" read more »
69 Reviews for El Camino Mongolian BBQ
Pretty darn yummy and I was really impressed with John, the owner. He was very good to us and tried to help us out with the sauces since it was our first time at his place. He also gave us coupons for free drinks on our next trip.
He even has cool little journals for you to write in.
It's all you can eat Mongolian BBQ for about 11.50.
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LOVE LOVE LOVE this place!!! I come about once a week and it's always an awesome experience. The staff is so friendly and the lady at the front always recognizes us and is just super nice. The food is great, and to the people who say it's bland: HELLLOOOO!!! You are the one adding the sauce so if there's no flavor it's your fault!!!!
So anyway, I think the pictures and notes all over the walls is great. It's so much fun to sit at a different table each time and read the different messages. I like to try to find people that I know in the pictures (haven't found anyone yet but there's still tons to look at).
Like most of the other yelpers, I don't waste my time with the hot food cart. I've only tried the eggrolls and they're nothing to write home about. It's really all about the BBQ. They have more veggies than other Mongolian bbq places I've gone to, and I love that they give you a base recipe for the sauce that you can adjust once you know how you like it.
You can get a frequent-diner card which is so awesome, so for every 10 meals you get one free!! How cool is that??? Love the staff, love the food. The only down-side is that I am always STUFFED when I leave there, but that's kinda the point of a buffet (and it's totally my own fault).
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Anybody like healty food? I like healty food (yes, I misspelled it twice, just as they did in the guestbook).
The guestbook was the best part about eating here. We had a lot of fun and the owner kept giving us thumbs up. I think he thought we were having a blast eating his wonderful healty food.
Not quite a 5 star place.
Theres a few things I would change
1. SERVE BEER. I know not all restaurants should serve beer but beer would go sooooo well with mongolian. I figure it would also improve your chances of making money since people (like me) would get full on just the beer.
2. Get rid of the water in the garlic and ginger and be more careful how much water you add when frying!! My plates kept coming out so wet it wasnt very tasty. Everything boiled instead of stir-fried and you watered down my sauce!!
3. The handles from the tongs touch the meat. I touch the handles. You dont know where my hands have been. Even I dont remember where they have been.
Aside from that it was a decent value and I had fun.
How good the food tastes really depends on how well you make your sauce. If your food sucks...more than likely you suck.
Davids bottom line- Sneak in a flask of soju and have at it. The foods in the hot bar are NG.
(NG=No Good)
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It's okay. It's decent. It's mediocre. There is nothing spectacular about this place...really nothing at all. Good luck. My food was watery and bland. The service was slow (and there were only two other people in the restaurant). Overall, I was not impressed.
Drive by, blink and you might miss this place. I only found it cuz my coworkers took me here. I like this place better than Su's down the way.
Verdict: Skip Su's, drive 3 miles toward Sunnyvale and give El Cam Mongo a try.
Fun, Fresh, Friendly and Fast = 4F's
I would add 3C's Cheap (only $13 for dinner included a drink and unlimited grub, Cheerful (love all the fun customer photos, plants and greetings in different languages) and Clean (tables, buffet and tidy happy bathrooms).
My two bowls = lamb & pork, bbq, soy, teriyaki, wine and then noodles, spinach, carrots, water chestnuts, mushrooms, pineapple and teriyaki in the other. I'm already craving a return visit. . . mmmm
They have a good amount of choices with fresh vegetable and meats. The service is really on point and what gives this place four stars.
As for your sauce, i don't recommend their standard sauce as the stir fry becomes too watery. I think next time i will ask teh chef not to use much water when stiry frying my food.
This place is ok. The price is decent for being a mongolian bbq buffet. I wasn't really satisfied though for dropping down that much money to this place though. It's okay, but not great. This place has a lot of frames and awards and reviews surprisingly. The service is nice though, probably the only reason I'm giving it 3 stars, but sides that, nothing special.
This is one of our frequent lunch spots. I come here pretty much to load up on veggies. The owners are really nice and they always know what we would like to drink. That's how often we come here. The food is always fresh and during lunch you get to choose either beef, chicken, pork, or some of each. Only dinner time they server lamb. They also have a hot food section to get rice, fried rice, fried chicken, egg rolls, corn, and a sweet potatoes (which I am not a fan of). They have a good selections of veggies and you can make your own sauces. They have a chart to give you suggestions but I usually just make my own. The only thing is my coworker always makes hers hella spicy!! Even if I didn't want it to be spicy it becomes spicy since the food is cooked on the same hot plate. So the strategy is if you would not like it to be spicy check out other people and see if they got alot of spices in bowl. If so, don't stand next to them. They have a frequent eating card after the 10th one you get a free meal. They take reservations of groups of 8 or more. Overall its a good place to go for lunch, its fast, healthy, and simple.
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The owners greet and tend to each patron with "Black Hole Sun" fervor. They have thought about the patron's experience in every possible way. This is the best run establishment I've ever seen.
If they wrote books on workplace efficiency, I'd make it my new bible.
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Lovely. Fairly priced too. Parking sucks. Credit Card limit of $15 means they want cash from everyone.
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Mmm meaty vegetabley goodness in two bowls. MMmMmMMmM.
HUzzah! I have found my new favorite Mongolian BBQ Restaurant!!! I absolutely adore this little place. My family and I have been in search for a new Mongolian BBQ place since the quality of service at our previous places had gone down drastically. So sad...
ANYWHO, back to the good stuff! The place is decieving from the outside because it's kind of in this jampacked plaza and looks like it might not be so great, but DO NOT FEAR, dear Yelpers! Once you go in, you're in the middle of a Mongolian BBQ Oasis! YUS!
The place is clean and bright and big, you are greeted promptly and with genuine cheerfulness, and the food on display looks both fresh and delicious. What more can you ask for?! Oh, and at the self-serve veggie area, they are proudly displaying their Yelp sticker! Yayuh!
This kind of food is for those Type-A "I'M HUNGRY AND NEED FOOD NOW" kind of people, because within three minutes of walking through the door, you have a table, and are piling two bowl fulls of veggies, meats, and sauces to your liking. And voila! In no time at all (I'm talking like, ONE minute flat), it's been stir fryed on those ginormous woks and you're eating pretty much the best meal ever created on this side of Mongolia.
Word.
So, in comparison to the two other Mongolian BBQ places I've been in the Bay, this one is definitely better. I'm personally not a fan of all the photos on the wall, or the kitschy decorations for that matter. The music was not what I expected. First there was the theme song from Titanic played on a flute. Then I felt like I was in the Andes with some Peruvian pan flutist. It just made for an odd atmosphere. The downer here is that dessert is not free.
The thing that makes this place better than the others is that it is cleaner, and you have more options to choose from to add to your plate. They also cook your meat first before adding your vegetables. Again, I'm not a major fan of Mongolian BBQ, but if you do, this is probably one of your better choices to go to in Peninsula/South Bay.
I enjoy eating here. But a bit too crowded, not enough room. You easily elbow poeple eating next to you. The service isn't what I call good.
This place is my favorite Mongolian BBQ restaurant. It's a little bit of a hole-in-a-wall as it doesn't draw much attention. (Though there is a large sign in the parking lot that caught me and my bf's eye when we were aimlessly driving around looking for somewhere to eat.) The food is cheap and good. To start off, you fill one bowl with meat and the other bowl with veggies/noodles, so that the chefs can cook the meat first and add the veggies later so it comes out just right in the end. So good! And if you're a newbie or not very culinary-inclined, there's a nice easy-to-follow chart with a suggestion for how to combine the different sauces to create a base. As for the warming cart with pre-cooked stuff like egg rolls, potstickers, etc., I usually don't bother. It's all about the BBQ, baby! Plus those are nothing to write home about anyway.
What really makes this place stand out for me, though, is the environment. The service is attentive but most of all, the place has a very sunshiney-feel. I love how the walls are covered with photos and messages of happy customers and their comments. Seriously, they're covered. It's not just one little bulletin board. And there are a lot of happy customers! The whole place fills me with good vibes, so that combined with the good food, makes me a happy customer too.
ECMBBQ deserves some love. I've been going here since 1993, and they've maintained a pretty damn solid Mongolian BBQ that whole time. Not particularly fancy, maybe not the best you've ever had, but when you want wholesome all-you-can-eat stir fry for very little money, this place remains the best I've found in the Bay Area.
Meats are simple frozen chicken, beef, pork, and lamb. The veggies are always fresh and always obsessively well-stocked. I rarely find myself wanting for a missing ingredient here, and they have added some items over the years -- noodles, pineapple, tofu, fresh cilantro. And the sauce selection is quite good; I love being able to mix and match between ~15 different oils and sauces to make the perfect degree of spicy/salty/sweet. And there's unlimited garlic and ginger in there too, which is about as much of both as I'm inclined to consume. Naturally, if you bring a date, be careful to coordinate garlic levels to minimize difficulties later on. ;-)
I would suggest steering clear of the steamer table. Apart from the decent fried rice, the rest of that section lacks flavor, and is consistently disappointing. The condiments at the end of the grill look a little dodgy, though I'm sure those have a multi-year halflife, so would be fine if that's your thing.
The physical layout is such that the line sometimes gets a little congested when someone (like me) takes too long concocting a perfect mad-scientist sauce. Still, as long as you're there when it's not filled to capacity, that's rarely a problem.
Side note: The first week they were open, this place is responsible for the best fortune cookie I ever received, which was "You will one day rule a small Caribbean island." And I intend to hold them to it.
Rating is actually a 3.5 (I like rounding down, sorry :p)
This place is a lot like Su's, but cheaper ($9.50 for lunch), and, if I remember correctly, with much more of a veggy selection. Meat is your standard lamb, beef, pork, and chicken fare. As others have mentioned, they cook things differently from Su's, in that they cook the meats first, then toss in the veggies afterward. Personally, I recommend putting most of your sauces in the meat bowl, and either ignore or just lightly flavor the veggy bowl.
Two complaints about this place. The food cart sucks (but then again, you shouldn't be eating from that anyway), and their counters smelled faintly of a just-mopped public restroom, which... wasn't too pleasant. Overall though, not bad. Friendly service, fresh ingredients, and not too crowded on a Saturday. Definitely coming here instead of Su's, for the selection and lower prices.
I heart Mongolian BBQ! I really do. You really can't go wrong with an all-you-can-eat / you-make-it-they-cook-it place for around $11 or so. They have a ton of really fresh ingredients and tasty sauces. I recommend adding more sauce than you would usually because it tends to come out a little bland.
I especially like using their restroom. It makes me laugh. It's all nicely decorated and even has the restaurant's business cards in the stalls for you to read and take while you're taking care of your own business. Yum yum yum.
I've gone here twice for lunch and although it's the best mongolian bbq buffet I've ever been to, I can't see myself coming here more than once every few months. This place is definitely popular at lunch and based on the homey feel inside where you can see testimonials from repeat loyal customers, it still is the same meat and veggies you expect at a restaurant like this. After a while, the different sauce and dressing combos will start to taste the same anyways.
I do like the service because they hustle to make sure they can turn tables over for the busy lunch hours. I definitely will come here than go to the Chili's down the street.
Our dear friend Berta introduced us to this place. I've never had mongo before and didn't know what to expect. But what a treat! The meats are thinly sliced and you have your choice of chicken, pork, beef and lamb. The vegetable selection is vast as is the "sauce" bar. Then the cooks do their magic and "Presto!" You've got your own delicious meal prepared the way YOU like it! In addition the place is super clean, the staff is very friendly and attentive and they even have books there for you to read as you eat!
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The best mongolian BBQ I have ever tastes seriously! the staff is wonderful and so nice too!
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One of my favorite places to eat. The food and sauces are delicious, and I love the fact that I get to choose what goes in. I'm a very picky eater, and I like the variety. I always leave this place happy-full.
I don't know why people are capping on the egg rolls, cuz I love them! Crispy, delicious. I always eat 4 or 5 when I go here. I love the sauce it comes with too. The only thing is, it stains my fingers red, lol.
The service is great, and I like how the owners really make an effort with the place, keeping it clean and with the decor. My son likes it here, and they are very accommodating for kids. John, the owner, even gave my son fruit snacks.
I keep reading about this Su's place, but honestly, I am very happy here and wouldn't go anywhere else.
This place is fabulous. You get to create your own dish and it can be as healthy or as unhealthy as you want. The prices are great and the staff is very friendly. I especially like that they have lamb as a meat choice.
My only complaint is they have only one kind of noodle (classic chow mean) and one kind of rice (white).
They also have a little buffett with fried chicken and some other items.
The best value Mongolian BBQ I've been to! The staff are friendly and the ambience is unique! My co-workers and I have been going here almost weekly!
The food itself is good but not spectacular (4 stars). Fill a bowl with the sliced frozen meat(s) of choice: chicken, pork, beef, or lamb. Fill a bowl with noodles and/or vegetables. (The other non-meat items like pineapple, tomato, mushroom, and tofu are covered under "vegetables.") Add whatever blend of sauces you want. They grill it up, and you're good to go. The selection of pre-cooked foods is somewhat lacking... but that's really not the main draw.
The food considering the price is very good (4.75 stars). You can get dinner, all you can eat, for $13 after tax and tip. Lunch is cheaper.
The service is outstanding (5 stars)! The owners are extremely friendly and attentive. Even with our huge group of 18 (plus other customers of course), nobody ever had to ask for a drink refill. Really nice people, very courteous and polite. Hands down, far and away, the best customer service I have ever experienced anywhere.
Highly recommended.
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I love this place. Every time I'm in town, whether its for a couple days, a week, or a couple months, I always have to stop by (when its a couple months I stop by several times). The staff is friendly, the food is delicious, it's all you can eat, and the price is CHEAP!
Yes, if you come at noon it's going to be crowded, but even when it's crowded the staff always seems to find us a spot and the wait is still less then what you'd get if it was a sit-down restaurant.
I've been to some of the other Mongolian BBQ buffets in the area, but none of them compare.
Wonderful quick service and smiling hosts.
Clean, bright with happy colors.
Fresh food perfectly prepared--unlike some Mongolian BBQs which put so much water on the food that it washed away and steamed the food rather than it tasting stir-fried.
The posted recipe seasoning guide was very useful and unique for this kind of restaurant; producing excellent results. If you like hot-spicy, it really is. If you don't another recipe will properly season it as welll.
What are you waiting for? Go!
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This is great for all you can eat lunch place to go to with your friends. It's cheap and it's all you can eat, you can make your own sauces so feel free to experiment with different flavors. Once you get the sauce down it is really good, especially the lamb meat. The owners are very nice, they bought the place few years back and really remodeled it and cleaned it up.
I think when it boils down.. I'm just not a huge fan of Mongolian BBQ... is it really even BBQ? There's just nothing special about it and it seems more like stir-fry than bbq....
Ok.. so the place is crowded... get used to that... we go there pretty close to 12:00 and after the wait in line to have our stuff cooked, our group of 7 people actually got seated... great!
But I can't remember what the stuff tasted like.... I know it's just a mix of a bunch of different stuff, but.....?
Ok... mind you that even with my doubts of the legitimacy of this place being called "BBQ", and the fact that I couldn't really taste the food... it does have some pluses... service, the fact that it's all-you-can-eat... and .... I'm still giving it 3 stars... I didn't HATE the place... but it's just not somewhere I'd necessarily say that I'm going to go back to.
The service and staff here are really friendly, especially the owner. Once I got in line to make my plate of mongolian bbq the waiter asked what I wanted to drink and had it at the table once I got back.
I was here to celebrate two friends' birthday. When we were pretty much done eating, they brought out a plate of stacked sliced fruit (apples and oranges), hershey kisses, and a couple of candles as a cake for the birthday people. So that was really cute!
It's a small place, but they were able to accomodate all 30 something of us and the pricing makes the bill so much easier for big parties.
Can't really say anything spectacular about the food...it's Mongolian BBQ. It's a good place if you eat lot, but I always feel like it's a waste for me to go to these all-you-can-eat places because I was full after finishing my first place.
Oh, and if you're a first time visitor the owner gives you a card for a free drink on your next visit. =)
I cannot extol the virtues of Mongolian BBQ enough. It is very much worth the drive over the hill, even in the heaviest of traffic for their tasty morsels.
The only downside is the distance from Santa Cruz, and its lack off alcohol.
Very good Mongolian BBQ. Very nice staff and very clean. Although I like this Mongolian place, I like Su's better.
It's all you can eat Mongolian BBQ!! Can't really beat that. :) Lots of ways to make your own sauce which I really liked.
My friends like to joke that none of my first dates should ever, ever involve food (I eat as much as a trucker but with the grace of a toddler). This is one of those places that one day, I'm going to go here with a guy I kinda like, he's gonna see me eat, exclaim "Damn, I had no idea you were such a fat kid !", and dump me as soon as we get home. Because I could eat my body weight in Mongolian barbecue. This place is really good.
Veggies beware : They don't have those little tofu chunks the Mongolian Barbecue at the mall has. It's all meat here (beef, chicken, pork, and lamb), but they've got lots of veggies.
Side dishes also offered, including veggie spring rolls (not very good), fried rice, steamed rice, and I think kimchi. Soda pop is a dollar with free refills, except the cans (Dr Pepper among them), and NO BEER. WTF ? I was craving a Stella Artois the whole time I was stuffing my face here. The hostess was so sweet that I couldn't hold the no beer thing against her.
Also, when my future boyfriends dumps me after eating here, I'm gonna make him give me back the $9 I will probably pay for him to eat cos I date losers.
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I had a great first time experience. The food is great. The service is excellent. The owners are very friendly.
All around the walls are pictures of customers and their testimonials.
Thank you Fayble for taking me here!
I went here for the first time with my roommate and his family. The strange and interesting decor (e.g. a saxophone hanging from a wall) made me nervous, but the food was much better than I expected.
It's great fun to pick your own meats and vegetables. I was wary of how my food would turn out since I was seasoning it myself, but I followed their most popular "recipe" up on the wall and it turned out great. The meats and vegetables tasted fresh, and it was great fun to watch them cook my food in front of me.
I'd definitely come back here again--its a good place for a casual dinner or office lunch.
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Wow, probably one of the most friendly places I have been in my life! The selection of ingredients was decent, with 4 types of meat (chicken, beef, pork and lamb) with lots of tasty veggies to choose from. What I also enjoyed was their additional included fried chicken and corn. It was an extra special treat since San Francisco doesn't have a Mongolian place, I was excited! Fattened up for sure, and had our photo taken for the wall!
Decided to try this place instead of Su's due to it closing for lunch 30 minutes later. First impression: the owner is super friendly! I went with one of my friends who had never been to mongolian BBQ before and he took her through the entire line, even helping her with the sauces. In terms of vegetables, they have a larger selection than Su's (further down El Camino), but the pineapple is some weird puree instead of chunks. Their sauce selection is about the same as Su's, though there are some differences. For example, El Camino has Teriyaki, and Su's has Sweet and Sour. Another nice thing about this place is they require you to use two bowls, which both lets you get more food and makes sense (meat takes longer to cook than veggies). Yet another nice touch is the owner gives you a coupon for a free drink on your first visit. It's also cheaper than Su's, at $9.50 for lunch. However, there's no soft serve :(
good experience altogether!
I've known my friend Laura for around 10 years now. After we stopped working together many years ago, we managed to keep in touch and meet up for lunch on a somewhat regular basis.
Initially, once a month or so, and then as we ended up working further afield, it got down to once every six to eight months or so.
Last October we ended up working about a mile away from each other and lunch was back to once every couple of months.
About a month ago, I took her here as I've been missing this place since I moved to Monterey and she was game to try it.
Since then, we've had lunch once a week - always here - I think that says it all.
The new-ish owners are super friendly and do a good job of making sure all the food areas are cleaned regularly and the hot plate gets a good scraping regularly too.
Not too sure about the Mallard in full Stuka pose near where you pick up your empty bowls or the near ubiquitous Godfather soundtrack that's usually playing, but I'm not complaining.
Oh, there's a Yelp decal on their front door now too!
Today's Fortune Cookie - "Many admire your social and physical appearance" - another keeper
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