I awoke on the morning of my 28th birthday in a business hotel in gray and rainy Inner Mongolia. This had not been the plan. The plan involved yurts, wide open grasslands, horses, fermented milk, and mutton, not 14 cable channels, a business center, and a view of an abandoned highrise.

Huhehaote, or Hohhot, as it is more commonly (and inexplicably) romanized, is the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. It may well be the least touristed city we visited, although in the summer the grasslands outside the city are a draw. We were there out of season, though, and, thanks to mistakes on all sides, our train didn't make it into the city in time for us to visit the grassland we came to see.

This was pretty heartbreaking to me, as I've developed quite a fascination with Mongolian cuisine. The real stuff, not just the fabricated hot pots and barbecues. The traditional Mongolian diet is primarily meats and dairy, with few vegetables or grains. Mongolians make yogurt and a wide range of other fermented and aged products with not just cow, goat, and sheep milk, but also from mare, camel, and yak milk. That alone is enough to make me want to investigate, but on top of that, the primary meat consumed is mutton. Then there are dumplings and porridges with cream and salted milk tea! I find this all incredibly alluring.

We had a strangely difficult time finding Mongolian cuisine in Huhehaote. Several restaurants our guidebooks mentioned were nonexistent, and the advice they gave about finding traditional Mongolian food (walk into any restaurant with Mongolian script outside!) was just laughably wrong, as, unsurprisingly, ALL restaurants in the area are signed both in Mongolian and Chinese. But I had spent 21 hours on the train for mutton offal and fermented mare's milk, and I was not about to settle for just another bowl of noodle soup. Instead we asked for advice at a hotel desk, and ended up at a sort of schlocky tourist joint with very kind but absurdly costumed waitresses. While we puzzled over the menu, and the waitresses insisted repeatedly that they had run out of sheep intestines, the six-piece house band trooped by, in rainbow satin deels and gold pointed hats — sadly, they were headed downstairs to a private party, but one of them, toting an electric keyboard, did bellow a jolly hello at us as they passed.

Eventually, we managed to order fresh yogurt (just cow's milk, sadly), boiled mutton with a garlicy dipping sauce, and slices of lamb's liver wrapped in fat and grilled. Well, it may not have been mutton stew passed around the yurt, and I have no idea if it bore any relation to traditional Mongolian cuisine, but it was pretty good. The yogurt was incredibly smooth, light enough to drink or sip from a spoon, and mildly tart. It was served with soft granulated sugar that you could stir in to taste, and it was a refreshing contrast to the meaty dishes. The garlic dipping sauce brightened up the mildly assertive sheep flavor of the tender boiled mutton, and together they made a very satisfying meal.

But the fat-wrapped liver... do I even have to tell you how good that was? I'll tell you what, you just go wrap something, a piece of shoe leather, whatever, in a quarter inch of lamb fat and toss that on the grill. It's not looking half-bad now, right? Well, do that with something that is already delicious, like a rich, earthy slice of liver, and there is pretty much no way to go wrong.