Bend’s Mongolian BBQ buffet is the ultimate in customer choice.

The restaurant offers dozens of choices of ingredients and flavors for customers to pick their own meals. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure restaurant.

”The customer, he gets all the choice,” said manager Daniel Tran.

For those unfamiliar with the Mongolian BBQ drill, it goes like this:

Claim your table in the spacious, if sparely decorated, restaurant. Make your way to the buffet line and grab a bowl (at dinner, it’s $6.50 for a small bowl, $7.95 for a medium and $9.75 for a large).

Then the fun begins. Mongolian BBQ offers 27 stops on the buffet line to tempt taste buds. Vegetable lovers can put fresh carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, cabbage and more into their bowls. Add some thinly sliced frozen meat, like beef, chicken or pork (it stays frozen in the buffet line for food safety reasons, Tran says). Noodles round out the dish, which by this time is probably heaping over its rim. Peanuts, green onions, water chestnuts and other ingredients can help add flavor.

Once you’re through the main line of ingredients, lug your heaping bowl to the sauce section of the buffet to add the pow and punch to your meal.

Mongolian BBQ offers 12 sauces on its buffet. Mongolian BBQ sauce, a sweet, slightly spicy concoction, is highly recommended, according to the management. Other choices include oyster sauce, ginger, garlic, spicy red pepper, sweet and sour and sesame oil. Don’t be afraid to mix and match, Tran said. There’s plenty of room in the bowl for sauces, and the restaurant recommends a minimum of eight ladles of sauce for a large bowl. Don’t be stingy.

Whew. Done loading up the bowl. Now the expert cooks at Mongolian BBQ take over.

Hand your bowl to the cook, and he’ll dump the entire contents onto the Mongolian grill, a four-foot steel circle heated to an incredibly hot temperature. Up to three cooks work at one time, circling the grill and stir-frying individual dishes with the help of long wooden sticks. Watching them work is like watching an intricate dance. They stir, thump the sticks on the grill, circle around, stir some more, spread out the food, thump the sticks, circle around. When the food is cooked – sliced so thin, it cooks very quickly – the cook pushes it into the bowl with a flamboyant scrape of his stick.

Since all the food is cooked on the same grill simultaneously, people with severe food allergies should be cautious. Sometimes food from one dish slips into another on the grill.

Once the food is cooked, take it back to your table, where steamed rice awaits and a server will bring the beverage of your choice.

Mongolian barbecue originated in the Shantung Province of China, according a a Web site on the history of barbecue. The style of cooking was adopted by Mongol rulers in the 13th century after they saw Chinese cooks stir-frying vegetables and meat on a hot rock or grill.

Bend’s Mongolian BBQ is much more modern, with a sophisticated steel grill and hood exhaust system.

But the results are just as tasty, Tran said.

Julie Johnson can be reached at 541-383-0308 or jjohnson@bendbulletin.com.