When you enter Mosu, sizzling sounds echo throughout the place. Khalil Shabib and Lily Tang are the owners of the Colonie restaurant.

“Cooking wise, the barbecues are great,” said Shabib, as he and Lily check in on customers.

At the other end of the restaurant, there’s the hot pot. The base is mixed with broth or hot water, which is all prepared in a pot ready to cook seafood and meat.

“With these maintaining a consistent temperature across the boiling, you’re able to cook your food much faster,” Shabib said.

This Asian BBQ and Hot Pot restaurant is an idea that’s nearly five years in the making.

Shabib and Tang are actually both engineers. It’s what the couple went to school for and ended up meeting at a firm. But for Tang, the passion wasn’t all there.

“This is definitely where I want to be, and I still feel like I made the right choice moving from engineering to opening my own restaurant,” Tang said.

Tang's passion was in culinary arts. She grew up around it. Her family owned restaurants across the Capital Region for many years. It felt right to head in that direction.

So the couple started putting together a business plan, which also entailed traveling to different Asian countries.

“Traveling has really opened my eyes to try things I’ve never tried,” Tang said.

During a two-year span, Tang and Shabib visited China, Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia to learn and try different food. Not only is the restaurant filled with recipes from these trips, but you will also find items from those Asian countries.

They also took a self-service ordering idea from Japan and created something similar, using iPads, to allow customers to order from their table at their convenience.

“It shows me they ordered a filet mignon,” said Tang, showing how it works. “And then I’ll just hit send, and that will go right into the kitchen and the kitchen will make the order right away.”

Years of planning, designing, and traveling came to fruition in late October when Mosu opened. The pandemic slowed them down, but it didn’t stop them from pursuing this passion.

The couple says this is a nice change of pace from working at an engineering firm.

“Not sitting, moving all the time. Putting out fires. Not literal fires,” Tang said jokingly.

On this Friday night, there are 120 reservations. The Asian BBQ, the Hot Pot, and the bar with street food are all busy serving customers.

The pair say their goal was to open something that this area has never experienced before, and the feel like they’re achieving that.

“We really want people to get away from the dine-and-dash experience, and kind of more be present and take their time, and really sample everything as much as they can,” Shabib said.