Timpo Mongolian Bbq

Great option for some Northern-​style Chinese food in the UBC Village underground food court. Not as cheap and quick as the two cafeteria-​style Chinese places in this food court, but definitely worth a visit. As the name suggests, their main focus seems to be Mongolian BBQ done in the typical style: you fill a bowl with your choice of meats, veggies, and sauces and they fry it up on a huge flat griddle.
For the real winner here, skip the Mongolian BBQ altogether and order off the faded menu. The Spicy Pulled Noodles ($ 12) is made with delicious, thick and chewy hand pulled noodles. The broth is somewhat Sichuan-​inspired, with the characteristic spicy and numbing (málà/​麻辣) flavour that comes from chilies and Sichuan peppercorn. Definitely worth a try.

Timpo is like… a spot of average in a sea of mediocre. It’s one of the few decent places on campus that I still go back to despite having been here for almost four years now.
While most people get the barbecue bowl here, I quite enjoy the other dishes on the menu. Give the bean curd noodles or «pulled noodles» a try. While not the best in the world, they really came close to what I had while doing internships in Beijing (the owners are actually from Northern China, not Mongolia). Nevertheless, their food is a great hangover cure or for just when you want something hearty and filling without breaking the bank.

Eating on campus is fundamentally a terrible proposition. Even the tolerable options become intolerable after a year or so because you eat at them all the damn time, and because students are basically animals (sorry Unilocal students, you know I love you, or at least am willing to pretend for a small consideration) most places don’t bother to be anything more than mediocre. So when I find a place I like within walking distance of my office in the Life Sciences building, I cling to it like a lonely bachelor clings to his cats while rewatching old Saturday Night Live bits from his youth on Netflix and wondering where the hell his life went wrong. Where was I? Oh right, delicious Mongolian barbecue.
Here’s the deal for those of you who’ve never had the pleasure. Mongolian places basically let you «build a bowl» if you will, you toss a bunch of ingredients and sauce stuff into a bowl and then they fry it up on a big ol’ hot metal grill with some long sticks. I think I remember seeing a pictographic history where it suggested that ol’ Genghis Khan hisself started the tradition back in history times, but I drink a lot and may be conflating that story with a G.I. Joe comic book where it was suggested that Alexander The Great invented pizza. Once again, I digress. The point is, if you’re a vegetarian with a broccoli fixation (like me!) who enjoys building small towers of food (like me!) you can totally indulge those tendencies at Timpo for the low low price of $ 6 a medium bowl, a buck more for meat. The staff there are very nice and cool and have never once given me the «hairy eyeball» or even the «justifiably exasperated sigh» when I hand them an excessively filled bowl of food to fry up. Seriously, I’ve been eating there twice a week for like 2 years and I can fit like three times the actual volume of the bowl into it if I plan carefully and studiously avoid the pitfalls of shame and guilt that might stop a lesser man. The sauces are typical of these sorts of places, with a cute little guide that tells you which ones to add for «salty» or «traditional», but it doesn’t matter since they all taste the same regardless and I just smother it with the Sriracha they provide anyway. I swear with enough of that stuff I could eat like, a shoe or a set of encyclopedias, it’s manna from heaven.
The point is that the Pita Pit takes for-​frigging-​ever most days and who the hell wants to eat the crappy dry Falafel at Donair Town? Not this guy I tell you. Timpo Mongolian allows me to just get ridiculous on a whole lot of veggies for cheap. I’m gonna keep eating there until they get put out of business by people abusing the generous build your own bowl policy or I get fired and have to go back to my old job at the porn store, whichever comes first.

Ok, the food selections in this part of town are pretty limited in terms of quality. This is located in the basement food court, and doesn’t entirely suck.
You pay by the size of bowl you would like for your raw ingredients, and then they cook it on the standard Mongolian BBQ round grill with the long sticks. They place that on top of complimentary rice and give you tea. A medium (which is large enough for me) runs $ 6.99.
They do offer 4 kinds of meat (lamb, chicken, beef, and pork), and a decent number of other items including a variety of fresh looking veggies, tofu, noodles. There is also a large variety of sauce ingredients (about 20) and a little guide to help you navigate it if you need the help in creating a sauce you like. Some of the more surprising choices which I haven’t seen at other Mongolian BBQs around town include asparagus, fried eggplant, and sliced potatoes.
One tip: When you add the frozen meat to your bowl they are normally in large curls that take up a lot of «air» space in the bowl. Smush them down and you can add plenty of veggies!
Service is friendly and helpful as well to guide you through the choices if you need help or something needs refreshing.