Golden Banner Offers `Ton' Of Mongolian Food

The Golden Banner, Safeway Shopping Center, 200 S. Third St., Renton. 255-4546. Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Sat. (closed Sunday). No dessert or alcohol. Wheelchair-accessible and no-smoking area; reservations unnecessary. Take-out and banquets available.

The proliferation of Asian restaurants in the Puget Sound area has resulted in what seems like a Chinese, Japanese or Thai establishment on nearly every block, but, for all the popularity of Asian foods here, one of the oldest cuisines on the continent is conspicuously under-represented in our melting pot.

Aficionados of Mongolian food might champion Broadway's Chang's and Genghis Khan in downtown Seattle, but an equally good and value-laden alternative is the Golden Banner, tucked away in the Safeway Shopping Center near Renton High School.

Owner Ha Ong has operated the Golden Banner for 12 years (the first 10 in the nearby Renton Shopping Center), and also spent five years running the (Vietnamese) Cafe Kim, a frequent participant in Seattle-area food and street fairs.

Ong's parents run the cafe now, but he gets plenty of opportunity to see them: The two restaurants inhabit the same interior space side-by-side in the former Renton Food Circus. ("Number three is very good," urged Ong's father as one of our party crossed the room to check out his menu.)

MINIMAL ATMOSPHERE

Nothing is particularly golden at the Golden Banner - the minimal atmosphere depends on plain walls sparsely adorned with Asian art and posters, silk hanging plants and yellow and pink overhead fluorescent lights.

Fixed tables with attached chairs, a la McDonald's, are mixed with unbolted tables and chairs, all completely naked, while red paper-accordion fold-out bells, of the Christmas variety, hang festively - if incongruously - overhead.

It may not be pretty or charming, but you don't come to the Golden Banner to revel in plush decor. Any decorating lapses can be forgiven once you taste Ong's Mongolian barbecue dishes, which are hot, healthy, fast, filling and cheap. One bite is enough to prove that his attention has been lavished in the right place.

Mongolian barbecue - similar in its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mix of meats and vegetables to the Spanish paella - involves a combination of beef, chicken, turkey, pork and shrimp with common fresh Asian vegetables, cooked at super-hot temperature on a large, circular grill.

Unlike Chang's, where diners load up bowls with buffet ingredients and sauces, the Golden Banner has speeded up the process by eschewing the buffet line in favor of fixed menu dishes displayed in photographs over the serving counter.

CALORIES LISTED ON MENU

Able to grill up to six orders simultaneously within a minute, Ong's "fast food" uses less oil than his two-dozen less-requested, standard Chinese meals on a separate overhead menu (priced similarly), and every Mongolian dish has its calories listed with its menu photograph.

Ong even has cataloged his food's carbohydrate, protein and cholesterol content on a separate sheet. None of his Mongolian entrees are more than 403 calories (the deluxe BBQ, which also is the menu's most expensive at $6.20), and all the food is value-priced in the $4-$5 range for a deep bowl of meat strips and fresh vegetables.

The (regular) Mongolian BBQ ($4.67, 337 calories) is a sizzling mix of chicken, beef, pork, turkey, cabbage, carrot, celery, bean sprouts, onion and green pepper. Ong was happy to substitute water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and pineapple in place of the cabbage and carrots, and the final mix was tasty and filling when combined with a small bowl of steamed rice (50 cents extra).

The chicken BBQ chow mein ($3.95, 329 calories), a half order of the regular chicken BBQ with added noodles, also featured good vegetables and a fair amount of chicken.

The noodles were just right, but a companion found the dish just barely dry enough to require soy sauce, available in packets at the counter.

Another friend's BBQ shrimp ($4.95, 298 calories) was fine without soy sauce, and featured a dozen shrimp over tender, crisp vegetables. Surprised by the unexpectedly large amount of food, she commented that the dish was enough to feed two for lunch with extra steamed rice apiece.

Ong's shrimp BBQ chow mein ($4.16, 328 calories), also a half order with added chow mein, seemed like "a ton of food" to my wife, who reported the eight shrimp were perfectly cooked and the vegetables fresh and crisp.

Extra orders (79 cents-$1.39) of meat, shrimp, vegetables or noodles can be added to each dish. The hot, large portions were almost more than three of us could finish, but every dish reflected a systematic lack of seasoning, which hardly bothered some of our party but seemed an essential shortcoming to me.

Each table is devoid of place settings, salt, pepper and other seasonings or condiments. Thus the forewarned diner should use the soy sauce, or the occasionally plastic squeeze bottles of hot chili sauce on some tables, to balance Ong's admirable attempt to keep calories low. Ong also provides a homemade secret hot sauce (14 cents for a small cup) that adds a flavorful touch.

Soda refills are 25 cents. Desserts are not served.

Everything we had was hot, tasty, plentiful and filling, and at the end of our low-key and low-cal experience a friend, who lives a block from Broadway, remarked that if the Golden Banner were as close to her as Chang's, she'd visit often. Anyone interested in cheap, good food would save a bundle and happily fill a tummy by doing just that.

Restaurant reviews are a regular Thursday feature of the South County Life section. Reviewers visit restaurants unannounced and pay in full for all their meals. When they interview members of the restaurant management and staff, they do so only after the meals and services have been appraised.