Wok On In

Walking into Wok On In, I wanted nothing more than to walk on out.

It's not an unpleasant-looking place, but there's not much to recommend it, as far as atmosphere. It's sort of brown and beige, pretty much a big room filled with tables and chairs, with an empty small buffet area (which appeared to have once been a salad bar) in one area and on one wall a much longer buffet that fulfills the restaurant's Mongolian barbecue mission. So it looked basically like a '70s cafeteria without the avocado green.

Then we walked up to the counter and noticed a beer pong sign-up sheet. This didn't appear to be a place that was serious about food, though maybe the beer pong was understandable considering the very close proximity of the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (which also would no doubt explain the "HDTV" and "Free WiFi" trumpeted on the menu). But since flocks of readers seem be enamored of Mongolian barbecue -- judging from my mail, anyway -- and this type of restaurant tends to be in extremely short supply (read: almost nonexistent) in Las Vegas, I had a mission of my own.

Maybe I should stop here and explain a bit about Mongolian barbecue if you're unfamiliar with the genre. It's sort of do-it-yourself Asian food, "Asian" being an overarching catchall. The drill is that you start down the line, filling your dish with meat and vegetables and noodles, then hand it to an attendant at the end who stir-fries it with a long wooden paddle on a large flat grill. So yes, you're somewhat responsible for the success of the dish, but that success depends in large part on the ingredients at hand.

At Wok On In, I wasn't real optimistic. It was a slow weeknight evening, and in anticipation of that, the meat bins were nearly empty. The beef -- shaved, bright red and slightly frozen -- and pork appeared to have some potential, but since the chicken bin was about nonexistent, we'd have to forgo that. So on we walked, filling our bowls ($8.99; an all-you-can-eat option is $13.99; with shrimp it's $2 extra) with such variables as broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, green onion, white onion, green peppers, zucchini, tofu, spinach, bok choy, snow peas (those were particularly fresh and crisp) and on and on.

Then we got to a section of sauces. In my only other experience with Mongolian barbecue, back in its '80s heyday, the sauces were doled out by the guy who did the cooking; I can't remember if you had a choice of flavors, but I think at any rate, not much.

Not the case this time. I bypassed the Hawaiian barbecue, sweet and sour, seafood, lemon and barbecue oil in favor of a ladle of curry sauce, one of garlic sauce and a bit of sesame oil. And then we handed off our bowls to the stir-fryer, who cooked the contents, slid each portion onto a plate with a scoop of steamed rice, and walked to the table where an employee had set our flatware, beverages and the soup and sesame flatbread that are included in the meal.

And wow; it was actually really good. I'm not going to take any credit here for my creative skills -- walking down the line, this was quintessential seat-of-the-pants. I actually think the success was due to the freshness of the vegetables (and the meats, appearances being deceiving) and the skillful formulation of the sauces, because each lent characteristic notes to the final dish.

The soup was OK, a sort of salty broth with cabbage and other vegetables. The bread had been cooked on the grill for good texture and had a lot of sesame seeds for good flavor.

We also tried a couple of starters, six wontons ($1.50; 10 are $2.25, 14 $3.25), which were filled with a reasonably flavorful turkey mixture but were on the oily side, and fried shrimp ($4.99), which were pretty good and arrayed around a mound of rice.

Other options include Mongolian pockets, Mexican street corn (a little incongruously) and even whole rotisserie chickens (after 5 p.m., $8.99 with rice and grilled vegetables). So just when I'd decided that this was at its heart a student hangout, the rotisserie chicken hinted that maybe it wasn't.

What it was was good. And a classic reminder to remember the book-and-its-cover thing.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@reviewjournal. com.