The Funky Monk (Evanston) -- now we have Mongolian food???

Adding to the growing list of formerly unrepresented cuisines now available for your delectation, Chicagoland now has (as far as I can tell) its first restaurant that bills itself as serving Mongolian food. For some reason, it is in Evanston. Also for some reason, it is called "The Funky Monk".

Now before you drop everything and furiously program Evanston into your GPS, visions of spicy lamb hot pot swirling in your head, keep in mind this isn't *Inner* Mongolian food. Think Russian, not Uyghur.

In fact, anyone acquainted with Russian food and especially the approximately 30,000 Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Kazakh/etc. places that have opened here in the past five years or so, will find much that is familiar. So, there's borscht. And pel'meni (doubtless called something else in Mongolia, and allegedly lamb-filled, but I'm skeptical).

Approximately half of the small menu is devoted to the category of stuffed pasta or pastry, whether steamed (manti-like dumplings and baozi), baked (samsy), or deep-fried (chebureki, pirozhki, belyashi). Most of these have the same beef filling, although inauthentically, there are some vegetarian options. (Authentically, however, the beef is chopped, not ground. Those who haven't had samsy before may be surprised that the filling has a bit more chew than one might expect.) Hey, if you like this stuff, you like this stuff. These are all good, and I don't think belyashi are that easy to find around these parts.

The rest of the menu is soups, most containing either house-made noodles or else the aforementioned pel'meni, their relatively bland broths considerably enlivened by copious chunks of fatty lamb. The most unusual of these is the one item here that I'm pretty sure you won't find anywhere else in town (I've certainly never had it before): Milk tea with dumplings. Here, the pel'meni float in a "broth" made from steeping a bit of tea in milk and water. The tea is not very prominent, to be honest, so that basically you are eating dumplings in hot milk. Because of that, this is a very filling dish; I would suggest sharing.

Prices are reasonable, although certainly higher than at the cabbie places. But a cheburek paired with a carrot salad (made, I would guess, by combining equal parts carrot and garlic) makes for a nice lunch for about $7. My main question is one of viability: this place opened on the site of the late, lamented (by me) Aguas Tortas, which in turn took over from the late, lamented (by no one) Uber Burger. Both of those offered cheaper, much more familiar food -- if they couldn't make it, what makes these guys think they have a shot in a town with conservative tastes and notoriously high rents? Maybe they expect a horde of countrymen to enroll at Northwestern, I don't know. I am rooting for them to succeed, though.

618 1/2 Church St.
(847) 859-6915

Buba karaoke (formerly waba) on western serves Mongolian food. I haven't tried enough of the menu, nor am I experienced enough with the cuisine, to say how good it is. I can note what is left of the Korean bar food on the menu has gotten a worse, and the Mongolian was tasty by comparison.

Also worth mentioning if you want to check it out without the karaoke experience. The karaoke is in private rooms and there is a separate restaurant area without karaoke going on.


Buba Restaurant & Karaoke Bar
5100 N Western Ave,
Chicago, IL 60625

"The Funky Monk" sounds like a place where you'd go to see Lenny Bruce opening for Abbey Lincoln.

laikom wrote:Buba karaoke (formerly waba) on western serves Mongolian food.

Interesting, thanks. I tried looking for the menu on their site, but no matter which language I select, the only food info I can find is that buuz are a Thursday-night special. Those are the large dumplings similar to manti that I described upthread. (By the way, I messed up: buuz are steamed like manti, not boiled. There is a similar dumpling that is boiled, but I don't recall if the FM serves them.)

But I did find that their karaoke features American, Korean, Russian, Mongolian, *and* Spanish songs. No more separate trips!

I stopped in here on Tuesday and despite the hot weather decided to try the Borscht. I thought it was very good and a bit different from other Borschts I've had. The dill and garlic flavors were not as strong and there was another spice in the mix that I liked, but I could not quite place. I had the small bowl which was plenty for me for lunch. The Cucumber and Tomato Salad was nothing special, but it was a large portion and had a nice dressing. I will go back to try the dumplings at some point.

The place is very clean and bright with lots of white Formica - almost antiseptic.

I think the prices were a bit steep. $2.00 or $2.50 for a single dumpling seems a bit much especially if the target customers are students. Then again, I haven't yet had the dumplings and perhaps they are large and particularly good. Also, if you can afford Northwestern, perhaps $2.50 a dumpling is no big deal.

Thanks for posting the menu.

bw77 wrote:I think the prices were a bit steep. $2.00 or $2.50 for a single dumpling seems a bit much especially if the target customers are students. Then again, I haven't yet had the dumplings and perhaps they are large and particularly good.

Only the first item on the "dumplings" portion of the menu is actual dumplings; the rest are meat pies, which are quite large. Two of those would fill anyone up. That said, I agree with you that the soups should be a buck or two cheaper.

cilantro wrote:Thanks for posting the menu.

bw77 wrote:I think the prices were a bit steep. $2.00 or $2.50 for a single dumpling seems a bit much especially if the target customers are students. Then again, I haven't yet had the dumplings and perhaps they are large and particularly good.

Only the first item on the "dumplings" portion of the menu is actual dumplings; the rest are meat pies, which are quite large. Two of those would fill anyone up. That said, I agree with you that the soups should be a buck or two cheaper.

As of yesterday both cheburek and belaj were priced $3.50 each. They have no clue how to make them regardless of the price.

cashflowrulesagain wrote:
As of yesterday both cheburek and belaj were priced $3.50 each. They have no clue how to make them regardless of the price.

Please explain? The ones I had were made properly and not too greasy.

laikom wrote:Buba karaoke (formerly waba) on western serves Mongolian food.

In his roundup of places to get stupid and eat dumb food, Mike Sula lists a few of the dishes there. They have the milk tea with dumplings, too -- someone should do a taste-off.

Any LTHers who have strong opinions (or none) about Mongolian dishes are invited to join the Evanston Lunch Group, TODAY, at 12:30, at the Funky Monk.

The "Mongolian" menu cements something for me: there's a vast swath of the world vaguely called Central Asia (I'm proposing Stanistan or the Technicolor Horde) where everyone eats exactly the same thing (at least in restaurants). A Turko-Ruso-Mongol medley of sorts. Something like "middle Eastern food" in its sameness across vast and mostly different places. The parallels of conquest make it make sense.

Evanston Lunch Group™ visited The Funky Monk yesterday. I think we'd all pretty much agree that, while not everything was great, there were enough hits to warrant a return visit.

While a few of us started with a soft drink called Bai, which was promoted for its antioxidant qualities, others had the salty Mongolian Milk Tea, reportedly almost like a salty thin soup, based on milk and green tea.


With group of 12, all of whom wanted to taste as much as possible, the management was exceptionally accommodating, cutting up many of the larger dumplings into tasting-sized portions. For example, the Steamed Dumplings stuffed with hand-cut beef:


A different kind of dumpling, also using the beef, was Chibureki:


A third version of the beef dish was the deep-fried Belyaji:


Another dumpling-isn dish was the Vegetarian Samsy, stuffed with squash:


For me, the highlight was the Tsuivan – house-made noodles with a distinctive, pleasantly firm texture, incorporating more lamb and vegetables:


There was a lot of food. The only dish that several of us didn't finish was the Shorpo, a light broth with lamb, carrots and potatoes (I left only the broth):


There offered a variety of sauces to go along with the dumplings, including a plum sauce, siracha mayonnaise, and the star of the sauces, a thin mushroom cream sauce.

Funky Monk bills itself as a Mongolian - Russian restaurant, but it should be noted that the Russian dishes primarily represent Eastern Russia – the region just north of Mongolia.

Service was very attentive, and overall, prices were reasonable. All that food, with tip, came to $16 each. I’m hoping Funky Monk will be successful. The location has been jinxed; previous residents included the lamented Aguas Tortas and the unlamented Über Burger. Maybe Northeastern Asian cuisine will be the charm. I’ll be back.

For me the high point of the meal was the mushroom sauce that was served as an accompaniment as was really excellent. I also enjoyed the Tsuivan, which would be nice as a take-out dish. The service was, as nr706 pointed out, very attentive.

I was rather disappointed in the dumplings which were in several cases quite doughy with underseasoned meat fillings. The soup was also rather bland without a rich broth.

I wish The Funky Monk would make a stronger commitment to Mongolian food, rather than calling themselves a Euro-Asian restaurant with Russian-Mongolian food. I could see myself returning for Tsuivan or a bottle of mushroom sauce!

This location has seen restaurants come and go. Watch this space. I hope they succeed.

nr706 wrote:Evanston Lunch Group™ visited The Funky Monk yesterday. I think we'd all pretty much agree that, while not everything was great, there were enough hits to warrant a return visit.


A third version of the beef dish was the deep-fried Belyaji:


Another dumpling-isn dish was the Vegetarian Samsy, stuffed with squash:


For me, the highlight was the Tsuivan – house-made noodles with a distinctive, pleasantly firm texture, incorporating more lamb and vegetables:

I agree with Tom and Gary about the food. The mushroom sauce was excellent (and when we said how good it was, the waitress offered to give us some as take-out), and the Tsuivan with its homemade noodles was very good too. The two dumpling pictures above are reversed, I think. You can see the squash stuffing of the samsy we got peeking out in the top picture; these samsy were my favorite of the dumplings. The other dumplings varied; the belyaji were awfully sturdy.

I too wish them good luck and would like to try some of the other soups. Yes, the shorpa was thin, but the lamb was tasty and generous. There might have been a bit of butter in the broth as well.

I wasn't positive which of those two dumplings was which. I switched the photos.