Chang’s Mongolian Grill

VERY dissapointed at the change in business hours.
We were looking for an early dinner on Sunday. We spent our money somewhere else.

As literary fans are aware, I will chow down on pretty much any animal that opens a door, a gate, or dares to romp in a meadow. And as longtime followers on Unilocal may be aware, I’m also a connoisseur of the fishes. If it swims, I’m all over it. (This one time, while visiting a cute little seaside town named Amity Island, I met a real dish named Chrissie Watkins. Sadly, Peter Benchley thought the story would sell better with someone with less fur playing the lead…)
Anyway, Chang’s has huge piles of meat AND fish just waiting to be cooked on the huge iron griddle. They cook everything just long enough for the meats to reach medium well, though one of my complaints about this place is the way the cooks use the same spatulas for everyone’s food around the griddle. No, I do not want my lamb to taste like shrimp and salmon, thankyouverymuch.
Nor do I think that onion (or broccoli) should be cooked as briefly as thinly sliced meat; especially when I specifically have the veggies separated in their own bowl and ask that they get cooked longer. Dumping them all on the grill at the same time anyway just makes me want to chew on said cook.
Minus one little Piggie for these affronts, the cheap rice and crepes, and the abomination masquerading as «hot and sour soup» (watery, meatless, and using black pepper. Sacrelige!).
All in all, you can’t go wrong when you build the meal yourself out of excellent ingredients. But be prepared for the side stuff to annoy you, or not, if you’re less critical than I am.
(BTW: How did they know that Chrissie Watkins had dandruff? … She left her Head and Shoulders on the beach. … Ha! That one slays me every time.)

Mongolian grills are fun and this one is good. The food quality is good and service friendly. Atmosphere is family and not for date night. We will come again. Bring your appetite.

I remember this place from before I even moved here. Must have been 9 years ago when my Sister had her wedding reception here. I flew in for a week and this may be the one thing I remember, the most amazing all you can eat bbq with all the freshest vegetables and meats at such a bargain price for what you get. Too bad no doggie bags, but I can see how the populace would abuse it and prefer the lower prices.
I have to give this place a five bc of what I’ve come to expect, one bad experience doesn’t change my opinion of this restaurant and I will surely be back. This is what happened…
I’m giving our beverage order we’re offered soup or salad, I asked for both but just given a salad; a very delicious Italian dressed salad. I walk up to the paying counter to request my soup and some chopsticks; you always have to ask for chopsticks twice, I think it’s bc there’s two of them or something. Anyways, I ask for soup and I’m told you really only get one or the other. It’s an all-u-can-eat…really?! I fight for the soup on principle and I’m given the soup. That’s just the kind of place this is. But here’s the deal, the soup wasn’t good; not compared to that salad. That must be why you can’t get both; we’ll eat the salad first, taste the soup, bleh, then go eat the bbq stuff.
Save yourself the frustration of having to chose, the humiliation of arguing over soup, the disappointment of merely good soup and just order the salad.

All you can eat for cheap. Mix and match your ingredients right to get the tight stir fry. How it all tastes is up to you. Very entertaining cook. Be sure to leave him some tip.

My family and I went to this place for lunch while on vacation in Portland. I’m giving it 4 stars because I think the good outweighs the bad.
First, the good. The selection of food is good. They have beef, pork, chicken, lamb, fish, and I think turkey too. Veggies selection is good too, and they look fresh. (See pictures.) They have a lot of sauces and the flavor is good. The restaurant is nice, clean and spacious. The waitress came over 2 or 3 times to check on us. Lunch price was only $ 9, which is fantastic. These are all good.
Now, what keeps this place from getting 5 stars from me is how they cook the food. Their chefs are not gentle with the food. They mix and stir so hard that your noodles are all under 2″ by the time they’re done. Plus, food stick on their inverted wok like crazy, maybe the wok is too hot, or too dry or what, but I’ve never seen food stick on the cooking surface like that before. After every 3 or 4 servings, the chef was scraping a thick layer of blackened food from the wok. CRAZY!
But in the end, the food still tasted good and I enjoyed my meal, so I’m giving it 4 stars.

First time here with my fiancé and his family, another great find right next to the Quality Inn they were staying at. We were skeptical at first but once we realized that it was an all-​you-​can-​eat buffet we were excited to try it. It turned out wonderful!
There was a wide arrange of selections for both meat and vegetables so there is the opportunity to make whatever kind of meal you like! The selection of sauces and oils was also very impressive.
Pretty much you grab a bowl or two and fill it up with what you’d like and then hand it to the chefs who cook it up right in front of you in about 5 minutes.
The chefs were charming especially the older one who did cute little tricks while cooking the meal.
We were all pleasantly surprised with how delicious our selections turned out! I also have to say that the mango lemonade was sweet and delicious! To top the wonderful meal off with an even lovelier surprise was when we found out that the little scoop of vanilla soft serve ice cream (with chocolate, caramel or peanuts on top) was part of the meal! Once again if your in the area or especially if you’re staying at the Quality Inn we all recommend this restaurant.

One of my favorite standby restaurants. It’s always fresh and made right in front of you & you get to load your meal the way you like it. Today it just hit the spot.

Wish they had the rice and soups on the buffet with everything else. Instead you have to ask the server to bring you some.
Food is excellent; I must be a great chef.

This place gets a five star review because I make a bitch’n sauce mixture leaving me with the most amazing plate of food ever. Wait… ever? OK maybe not ever but dannng this is good. Add to it the rice wraps and plum sauce. OH BE STILL.
Throw some moola to the grill guys, they are a happy lot and try to make you experience fun.
Always good service, clean environment.

This is my favorite location and such a great place to take friends for lunch.
We are like regulars now and the staff always remembers us and is super nice.
Our kids even love going to Chang’s!
So good one of my top lunch spots for sure :)

This is my favorite restaurant, easily. I am ALWAYS in the mood for Changs.
Don’t waste your time with the Gladstone location, it doesn’t hold a candle.

Love it!!! With 4 grand sons this place is a bargain. Once you have down the sauces the food is wonderful. It’s fun to watch the cooks do their thing with twists and turns. Easy to get to, quick service and good eats, it’s worth your time.

This was our first time at Chang’s and it was… meh… ok. It was kind of confusing as we had never been to this type of restaurant before. We go in and are seated and we are told how it works. They offer partial table service. First off they offer us soup and salad and beverages that are not a serve yourself part of the buffet. They offered us wraps which we declined. I didn’t really understand what they meant by wraps. Do they mean egg rolls? When they brought the soup out it was unlike any other hot and sour soup I have ever had. It was more like salt and pepper soup. Not good I would recommend skipping this. I would highly recommend that they change this recipe. The salad was just a bowl of lettuce with some ranch dressing on it. Mr. Chad was not impressed. So how it works is one goes up to the’buffet’ and picks up a bowl that only holds 11/2−2cups choose your meat. chicken, seafood, lamb, etc. Much to my surprise there is no rice on the table, there is some undercooked, hard to chew lo main. Next choose your veggies, tofu, sprouts, cilantro, hot peppers. Then finish it off with the various sauces in which to choose such as soy, lime, chili oil, ginger, garlic, etc. Then you take your bowl up to the round counter, take out a couple of dollars for tip so they will sauté your dinner right in front of you on this large hot stone. If you tell them your are a vegetarian they will water down and scrape the stone so your food is not cooked where meat was touching. The patrons watch as the food is cooked down to about 75% of what you had in the bowl to start with. After that they plate it up and hand it back to you. One looks down and thinks hmmmm… this is only ¾ cup of food. One has to do the process 2 – 3 times to get filled up. Makes one feel like a piggy to go up again and again. Not a tremendous value here folks. Oh you can get rice. You have to ask for it and they bring it out. It is not on the «buffet.» I have to say I tried to put copious amounts of sauces on it, ¼ cup garlic on it and the flavors just were not there. I had to get some sriracha that flavored it to my liking.
Soft serve ice cream comes with the meal but it is not an all you care to eat situation. They bring that out to you. A few suggested changes:
–Put rice on the buffet. Not just plain white rice. There should be other choices of rice. Also an option for veggie fried rice would be nice.
–Offer serve yourself beverages, ice cream, soup and salad for value factor.
–They should announce when they are closing the grill down for the night. This would prevent patrons from filling up their plate and take it over only to find out that the grill is closed. (last call announcement)
The service was excellent despite the fact that they are always hiring as per their sign out front. They have an area that one can hold a small birthday party in behind the sauté counter. Unless you eat huge bowls of meat every time, this experience was not a tremendous value. A supper price of $ 29.00 for two people at a partial all you can eat situation. On top of the tipping the sauté masters, and the partial waitstaff, it is a better value to go to the grocery just down the street and pick up some precut veggies and shaved meat of your choice and sauté it yourself at home. meh…

Ever since i came to portland almost a year and a half ago… i was introduced to changs. Highly recommended by my peers, and boy they weren’t lying! My wife and daugther are currently addicted to this place. I love all the food, the diversity and options. the prices.
Annnnnnnnd now im hungry! Damn.

Overall very tasty and fresh. The service was nice, and checked in with us several times. They were happy to ask for tips at the grill and again on the check, so make sure you bring a few extra bucks for the grill masters :)
It wasn’t so busy when arrived. I would probably return for lunch next time to save a few pennies.
Didn’t give five stars for a few reasons. The «salad» that comes free with the meal was just dressing and lettuce. Also the beef was a bit tough. finally, the cost for dinner seemed a bit high for the selection offered.

If you don’t like Changs your doing it wrong.
Go for lunch and don’t eat breakfast.
Wear lose fitting pants.
Use two bowls, one for meat and noodles and the other for the vegetables.
Repeat until busting at the seems.
Go home and take a nap afterwards.

I’ve been to quite a few Mongolian BBQ restaurants in my day, and I always enjoyed going to Chang’s. They didn’t limit you to one bowl for your visit and even allowed multiple bowls per trip. Fresh, quality ingredients are always well stocked on their BBQ.
In addition, rice, rice wraps, and ice cream are included with each visit.
The lines get long sometimes (like Friday lunch), but in general it is pretty good.

Worth the $ 10 (+tip). .The chefs are always friendly. And people complaining theres no salad; …its Mongolian, if you want salad go someplace else. So (considering its Mongolian) this place is a really great place to eat out.
I came in at a quiet time (12:45) so im not sure how it is during busier hours.

Time for another update, since we still eat here all the time. This time was not a good experience.
They weren’t very busy. There was no line. There were two servers and two cooks, but no one cleaning the buffet so it was a big mess. After our server took our drink order, she never came back until it was time to drop off the check, even though we tried to flag her down at least a half dozen times.
The food was dry, gritty, and tasted a little bit «off,» so we really would have liked to get drink refills and a bottle of spicy sauce so we could try and get it down. I really dislike wasting food, and I’m very careful not to get more than I can eat, but this time we couldn’t come close to finishing.
We’ll be back; because hopefully this was a singular incident, but without adequate service or good food, it’s not worth it at all.