BD's Mongolian Grill Offers New Menu To 'Be More To More People'
BOLINGBROOK, IL – For more than 30 years, bd’s Mongolian Grill has allowed its customers to customize their own Asian-inspired stir-fry creations in a setting in which chefs go to work at large stainless-steel workstations for all to see.
While that remains the case at the eatery, which now only has two remaining locations in Illinois — including one in Bolingbrook — bd's has introduced new fresh culinary options in which dishes are elevated, providing a different twist on the dining experience for its clientele.
The Bolingbrook bd's, located at 619 E. Boughton Rd. since 2007, recently rolled out the new menu items and has also gone through an aesthetic rebranding that makes for an up-to-date dining experience for what has come to be known as a reliable casual dining favorite.
The restaurant's other Illinois location is at 221 Washington St. in Naperville.
The menu changes allow those who want to continue to create their own stir fry dishes happy but also caters to those who are looking for a more upscale option. Chefs at bd's have created more contemporary-style salads and bowls with scratch-made sauces meant to draw in a new group of customers who may be new to the brand.
“People today are a little more savvy when it comes to ingredients and what they’re looking for in a meal,” said Lori Cominsky, bd's vice president of operations and training. “So bd's is certainly a family experience where people come and celebrate together and we want to keep that part of us, but we also wanted to offer something to people who aren’t necessarily looking to build their own stir-fry or several bowls of food.”
She added: “We kind of wanted to be more to more people.”
The new menu items offer classic Asian flavor profiles including new items that feature several cuisine styles including Korean, Japanese, and Thai-inspired dishes. There is a Bangkok chicken dish, an innovative Shanghai drunken noodle dish that has been a hit along with new offerings.
Several items on the fresh market line of the create-your-own stir fry station have been added to provide a different look than in the past. Some of the sauces have also been switched out to provide more updated options for those who want to give the Asian fusion style menu a try.
But like other businesses, bd's Mongolian Grill has also been hit with some obstacles as the changes come while restaurants continue to deal with restrictions and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It certainly has its challenges,” Cominsky said. “Supply chain issues from ingredients to equipment (have) kept us on our toes and makes us be a little more flexible in the timing of things and how quickly we want to go versus how quickly we can actually go.”
Cominsky said that the restaurant had to make menu modifications to adjust to the restrictions that were brought on by the pandemic. She said dealing with the restrictions associated with COVID-19 has made the restaurant’s teams a lot more flexible, which has made the transition to the rebranding of the restaurant more interesting than if done in normal times.
But she said that the response to the changes has been overwhelmingly positive thus far, providing officials with the restaurant chain confident that the shift to more of an elevated menu was the right move.
“I think we just wanted to do a little bit more so people can utilize us in the way that they want to,” Cominsky said. “The overall experience of bd's is an American institution almost and people are very passionate about building their own stir fry. We don’t want to alienate those people, but we want to be a little more inclusive.”
This article originally appeared on the Bolingbrook Patch
