Hot Iron Mongolian Grill

This place has always been a great spot for lunch or dinner food is amazing, very clean and never had any issues except last time I was in there the older blonde server tho she seemed like she knew how to do her job she was very short with my wife and I and it took what seemed like a lifetime to get our refills even tho the restaurant was not busy. Not sure if she was having a bad day or what but even if that was the case it shouldn’t have been taken out on paying customers. I don’t want to stop coming here I really enjoy it but If I make an attempt and she is working I’ll come back another time… pretty sad that one person can ruin your whole experience

Oh yeah ! I will come here again. Have been to many Mongo grills (Everett, Mukilteo, Lynnwood) and like them. I loved this place. I enjoyed the friendly staff and great food and selection. I like the price choice for one trip, or all you can eat also. Good as it gets here. Thanks !

Having been here a few more times, I realize that with as messy as people are, it’s unreasonable to expect constant white glove cleanliness. Compared to other Mongolian grills, I’ve never been here at a busy time so I’ve never really been in a line. Everyone is pretty great here and customer service is genuine.

I had to do a review because the food was so delicious and reviews had me questioning whether we should go here. We got seated immediately, server was very busy with the entire restaurant, however she kept our drinks full, tables cleaned and she was even doing some cleaning on the side. Wow. No this is not a 5 star place. But it’s a great Mongolian place. Lots of choices with vegetables, meats and sauces. Also very affordable, quick and easy. I would come back often if I lived here. :) Ambiance is very basic, would not recommend for a first date. :) As far as food «touching «that’s true. Typical Mongolian set up.

Used to go to this location many many times before it changed to Hot Iron. Been to Hot Iron twice, and won’t be back. It’s nearly the same food, same dining room and the same hot iron cooktop — but the ingredient options were fewer and weren’t as fresh, the sauce options were bland and the dining room floor and tables were dirty (grimy). And I’m okay when the cooktop gurus are straight-​faced and not much for small talk — but the Hot Iron cooks were jerks who seemed to hate their jobs and wanted to take it out on the customers.

DO NOT EAT HERE!!!
Unless you like getting food poisoning that is. I took my wife here about a month ago. When we first got there the place was dead, there were flies flying all over the place and the meat looked like it had been sitting out for a while. Just seeing the way they keep the raw pork, fish, chicken and beef out right next to each other just doesn’t seem right. But we decided to give this place the benefit of the doubt. So we both carried on with getting our food. My wife stopped eating her food about a quarter of the way through because she was scared she would get sick after eating my food within 2 hours I was vomiting I had gotten really bad food poisoning. I really feel like someone needs to call the health department and report this restaurant before anyone else gets sick.

Greeted as soon as we walked in and sat down instantly. It’s $ 11.5 for all you can eat on the weekends definitely worth it. Server was very friendly and polite. Refills were instant and free little scoop of ice cream after we ate. I will keep going and tell my friends.

My fiancé and I have been coming here literally every Friday for 7 months. We usually come here after work around 5:00PM/ish, so we know this place EXTREMELY well. I have to say this is my favorite restaurant. I have read a lot of the reviews, especially the bad ones and I just want to say that the people who do not like this place have way too high of standards. This is basically a glorified teriyaki buffet. This is not the kind of place you come in to expecting the Gods to descend from the Heavens to serve you. So don’t expect it to be anywhere near perfect. And if you’re concerned about fake fingernails in your food, maybe a buffet isn’t right for you. Things tend to happen when multiple people are dishing out of the same container.
Jessica, the waitress is always BLAZING around the joint kicking ass and helping everyone as much as she is physically capable of handling at one time. A lot of times at peak hours there can be anywhere from 30 people to 60 people trying to all be helped at once and she always has a smile on her face even when she is the only on out on the floor. Sometimes she has to work 12 hour days doing this stuff. No joke. If that were me I would be dead on the floor! The cooks are insane working over a giant HOT grill in the middle of summer. Always friendly, never throwing a fit about it. And they do a beautiful job cooking up your meal for you.
For a glorified teriyaki joint, this place is very clean. But unless you expect a consistently spotless floor, you probably will find something wrong. If you expect a steamed cleaned table and chair, you probably won’t find that there either. But they do spray and wipe down their tables and chairs with disinfectant. It may not be spotless during peak hours, but who’s to say any other busy restaurant with two employees working ever will be spotless?
So as a regular, I would give this place five stars. If you saw on a weekly basis what these guys do for you, you would be amazed. To those who do not like this place and prefer Mill Creek, I’m sorry, because you really are missing out. Mill Creek doesn’t have anywhere near as many options as Monroe. Their food is also very bland and I actually think it might be more expensive (?).
I suggest giving Monroe a shot and not going in with five star expectations. Because you will be let down. But then again, if it really wasn’t as good as I explain, there wouldn’t be masses of people coming to dine here every Friday night.
Hope this helps!

Mill Creek location earns 3 stars more than this one. Monroe management seems to overlook some basics, like:
1) when you ask diners what they would like to drink, bring the water to their table.
2) pressure wash the floor when it starts to get sticky
3) half-​empty cardboard boxes stacked atop metal racks are OK in the back room, not so much in dining area
4) refilling the liquid condiment trays by pouring from a jug from several feet away will splash into the other trays.
5) It’s possible to go around the corner toward the kitchen without putting your hand on the wall.
6) Bare hands might not be the best method for clearing crumbs off the table. Especially if you’re just about to go get a fountain drink for a guest.
On the other hand, the cook, and one of the servers, were helpful and friendly. I got my own water (after server #1 forgot — at least my hands were a bit cleaner); server #2 noticed, and cheerfully broght water for a fellow diner.
Still, next time we will likely drive 5 minutes longer and eat in Mill Creek.

I wanted to love this place because I love Mongolian grills usually, but where they cook your food is disgusting so that’s a big turn off for me. You can see grease build up everywhere (don’t look up!) and there is food debris everywhere. Other places that I have been to were way cleaner than this. If I can see how icky things are in view, it makes me wonder how icky things in the back are.

My husband and I came on for lunch around 1:00 pm on a Sunday. There were a few other people in the resturant. We got our bowls of food, had them cooked, sat down and ate. Food was pretty bland, even after putting sauces and seasonings on it. About half way through my food, I found part of a fake nail in my food, I can’t wear fake nails for my job so I know it wasn’t mine. Told the waitress. Her words to me were «hmm, it isn’t mine, and none of the cooks have pretty nails because they are guys. I don’t know who’s it could be.» My appetite was gone and I did not finish my meal. My husband’s food was burnt. We got no apology and had to pay for everything. My meal should have been comped. The only thing good here was the green tea. Will never be returning.

It’s really hit and miss sometimes I go there everything is set up foods good cooks really friendly but other times forks are not on the table when u get the food there’s not much there and the cooks not there so u have to wait. So it’s a guessing game if it’s going to be good or not

Great place to gorge on food. No way to say that your food’s bland since you’re the one preparing it. The few times that I’ve come in (all during lunch) the place was dead. The staff was helpful with drink refills and the place was clean. Plentiful toppings and I have to admit that I prepare a mean Mongolian Bowl.

I like the food selection. No one was out front when we came in, so we ended up seating ourselves. No one showed up until we were nearly through the food bar. The food was really, really good. However, I think it’s over-​priced to charge $ 9.99 for a bowl of veggies and meat. Because I loaded my bowl with mostly spinach (which significantly cooks down), I couldn’t get enough in my bowl to make a satisfying meal. I prefer the Mongolian Grills that let you go back for seconds.

I love that this place has a to-​go option. If you eat there. it’s okay. A little bit sterile — not much of an «atmosphere»

I think this place is really good, I think over a year ago (2013) they change owners. Here for a low price you’ll get all you can eat, a great variety of ingredients to chose from, a fun display while they cook your food. And what I like the best is that you can eat pretty light too. No noodles and tons of vegetables some lean meat will make a low carb meal, something to to easy to find there days when you go out for dinner.
Overall good place to stop by…

I kept seeing this while dining across the street at Red Robin and put it on my list of places to check out. The other location in Mill Creek is perhaps my favorite restaurant at present and has been for many years. I was worried this would not live up to the greatness of the other location so I did check that they were owned by the same people ahead of time. It does have some small differences but in general seems to be pretty similar, in fact it seems to have some of the same employees working here.
I love Mongolian grill, but what makes this one of my favorites is that it contains both olives and tofu, which I now feel are required to make the best Mongolian grill dishes. I love being able to make my food containing exactly what I want in it and not having to pick out things I don’t like. Its super vegetarian friendly. I also see ginger has been added to the options for possible toppings. They do tend to have a greater variety of sauce choices than most places and also have a separate section of sauces that can be added after the meal is cooked. Its also really great to be able to watch your food being cooked so you know that nothing weird happens to it when you are not looking.
At this location they have both white and brown rice available, you can also get some self serve miso soup and meals come with frozen yogurt. I hear the chai vanilla is pretty great. I was confused that although you can get a large bowl with a single serving and take home the leftovers, or a small bowl that is all you can eat, there did not seem to be different size bowls. Pricing for either bowl was 9.99 $. This location is large and spacious and I prefer the layout from the other location.

I’ve never tried any Mongolian Grill, ever, so this was a new experience for me. For the price ($ 7.99?) for an all-​you-​can-​eat buffet was awesome. I picked what I wanted to eat from the buffet and the man with the spatulas cooked it up in a jiffy. I wasn’t a big fan of the sweet-​n-​sour sauce I chose, but I definitely feel I got my money’s worth.
My only complaint was the battle I had to put up to get some pork to break off from the frozen mass in the buffet table.
I’ll can see heading there for lunch again in the future.

We go to Hot Iron every once in while. The kids like the whole Mongolian grill idea. But today we really should have gone somewhere else. I’ll try not to make this sound like a white whine…
First off we had to wait for about 5 minutes before anyone even acknowledged we were, then we had to wait another 5 to be seated… There was only 2 other customers.
Then another 5 minutes for the girl to realize maybe she should ask us if we wanted drinks. How long do you think that took? Yup there’s a pattern.
Okay, now we’re 20 minutes in and we can go get our food. Oh wait let’s dig through the bowls to find a clean one. I mean literally the bowls at the top of the stack had large and obvious stuck on food on them. They didn’t even try.
Good thing I didn’t want noodles since there was barely enough to give my youngest daughter, since that’s all she eats here.
Half the rest of the food out was either empty or not looking very fresh.
So all I really wanted was chicken. Well I got some, but I wouldn’t call it chicken. More like scraps since that was almost gone too as were half of the sauces. (Beef was empty as well)
So we get in line, watch our food get cooked… and the dude must be new because he’s over cooking everything. The noodles were almost all black and crunchy. I almost told him to dump it so I could start over, but remember, there weren’t any left.
Okay here’s you plate sir… That’s not mine.
Would you like some rice, oh were out of rice. Okay fine, I wasn’t getting any but the kids were bummed. They all love it. Now they did have brown rice, so not all was lost.
Okay, well, at least I can put some of that awesome coconut curry on my… Oh, okay never mind. Should have saw that one coming. It wasn’t just empty, it was a clean empty pan. Maybe they were out of that completely?
Well at least we can get some chopsticks and we all know how much the kids love those… Oh… I think you know what comes next.
So maybe this was because it was a Sunday at 2pm, but DAYUM PEOPLE.
Silver lining, they had this mocha soft serve which was actually pretty good and the girl that was there working there was nice.
I will say that Mill Creek location is MUCH MUCH better, but stay away from the Monroe location until they get their act together.

I think Hot Iron is super tasty. For $ 9.99 you get all you can eat dinner, I only can eat one plate, it’s super filling! You can’t keep leftovers so keep that in mind. You create your own stir fry then they wok it up for you on their hot iron grill thing.
This place seems clean enough. Service was friendly too.