Pinecone Mongolian Grill - Our First Official Restaurant Review

In this crazy online world, part of establishing your site is attracting visitors. Here at MeetMerced.com we are no different. We can't have a site with no visitors. So today, we introduce a major feature of the site, the restaurant review, in the hopes that we can attract more visitors. We, like everyone else, have to pay our bills. We can't do that without selling advertisements that help maintain this free service to the community of Merced. The ads that we do sell, don't even begin to pay for the amount of time we have put into this site. It takes a lot to successfully launch a community site such as this. So point of this off topic rant, I mean story... click on the links to the left on this Super Cyber Monday and do some of your online shopping with our affiliates, who graciously give us a percentage of your shopping bill, just for steering you in their direction. Tell your friends to do the same. Okay, back to the topic at hand...

Today on MeetMerced.com we publish our very first restaurant review. Hopefully, you will bare with us, as this is our first and bound to be full of errors.

We chose to visit Pinecone Mongolian Grill for this first review, considering it is billing itself and its new 'V' Lounge as "the" place to be in Merced on Tuesday-Saturday from 5pm to 12pm. The restaurant is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 11am to 9pm. It also features a Meeting room with seating for up to 60 people and a Banquet Room with seating for up to 100 people.

Pang's Busy!: Pang Her, part owner of PCMG, is busy stir frying someone's food. This picture is from the PCMG Myspace page.PCMG serves an Asian blend of fried rice, orange chicken, and egg rolls, but that is where the similarity between other Asian food smorgasbords and PCMG stop. Upon first entering the place, you have to admire what PCMG staff has done with the aging Pine Cone Restaurant building. I can remember a few birthday parties spent their and heck, even my Mother worked their as a waitress in high school, but the building and grounds look the best I've seen them in ages.

Like most other buffet style eateries, you pay before you eat. The price is user friendly, considering my wife and I ate all we wanted $19.37 plus a $5.00 tip to the cook staff and buss boys. Its a pretty good price when you consider that a Premium Chicken Sandwich meal at McD's with fries and drink is $7.80 now a days and at the PCMG, the foods better and you can eat as much as you like.

The first thing you'll want to do is find a table. Then head back to the assembly line to create your own custom Mongolian Grill stir fry. You add your vegetables (everything from onions to broccoli to peppers), meat (chicken, beef, or pork), and your choice of ethnic sauces (soy, sweet and sour, and lots more), hand it over to the cook who uses this giant range in the middle of the room to fry your stir fry to perfection. Then, viola, you have your very own custom stir fry. I made mine with lots of Sweet and Sour sauce and a little bit of Sesame Ginger sauce. It sure was good.

As for the buffet style food that is available (egg rolls, sweet and sour pork, fried rice, generic chow mien, etc.), it was also good, but don't fill up on it. Save room for that fresh PCMG stir fry of your own creation. You won't be disappointed.

Soft serve Vanilla and Chocolate (on most days, the day I went Chocolate was out of order) Ice Cream is available to satisfy your sweet tooth and beer and wine is available by approaching the payment counter.

V LoungeIf you plan to come for more than food, there are some good parties that happen in the PCMG 'V' Lounge, Merced's newest Ultra Lounge. It is in the same facility.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone in the area craving a lot of good wholesome Asian cuisine.

*** Please note that MeetMerced.com's Tim Shady knows Pang Her and family, owners of Pinecone Mongolian Grill, but is offering an unbiased opinion of the restaurant... it's good!

If you would like to write a restaurant review... sign up for a username and password. Once you get your password, sign in and click add blog entry directly underneath your name. Under Topic, select Restaurant Review.

Thanks,
Tim Shady