Prime Beef Shabu - King Shabu Shabu
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| $22 + Tax |
I love Shabu-Shabu. I can have this for lunch and dinner everyday if only I can afford to. I don't cook but I love this cook-it-yourself table top cooking format at a Shabu-Shabu restaurant. I was never a fan of this dining format until I discovered this restaurant. I had visited a few Shabu places before but I never liked it. Back then, I felt the meat was gamy, and the dipping sauce too boring. I used to think Shabu was bland and overall not that appetizing. But this place completely changed my feeling for Shabu-Shabu. I think the quality of the ingredients really make a huge difference. The meat here is of very high quality! The ponzu sauce and goma (sesame) sauce here are the best tasting dipping sauces I've had among all Shabu places.
A meal like this may look easy to replicate at home, but not really. I did try a few times but it was never as good. I wasn't able to get the ponzu and goma sauce to taste as good as the sauces in this place. I tried different bottles from the Japanese supermarkets but I couldn't get the taste that I like so much. It's the same with the meats and the veggies. I often got bitter napa cabbage when I bought them from the grocery stores. May be I just don't know how to pick out good napa cabbage. The meat that I bought was never tasty, it always carried a hint of gamy taste and frozen smell. In another word, I totally couldn't replicate the freshness of the meat and the veggies. This is why even though this is pricey, I still have to come to this place whenever I crave for some healthy meat.
Everybody has a different way of enjoying the Shabu here. Everyone has his/her own boiling pot and nobody has the same tasting meal because everyone has different preference in terms of how to season their pot. For me, I always prep my pot like this:
- Drizzle a few rounds of sesame seed oil and a few rounds of soy sauce ( from the bottles near the pot) when the water is boiling.
- I dump in the dried sea weed square and the shredded dried sea weed first because these help infuse the flavor into the water. The longer they stay in the water, the better the broth will turn out in the end.
- I then add shiikate mushroom, fish cake pieces, carrots and whatever root veggies are on my veggie plate.
- Then I add the tofu, some leafy veggies like spinach and nappa cabbages.
- I then dip in the thinly sliced meat which cooks almost instantly, I dip the cooked meat in dipping sauces that is usually mixed by me, with the condiments I'm provided with (a little plate of green onions, minced garlic and daikon), and I eat along with the cooked tofu, fish cake and whatever leafy veggies that are cooked from the pot at the moment.
- I cook more leafy veggies and more meat as my meal progresses.
- Before the end I cook the small bunch of glass noodles because it taste better this way when the broth is more infused with the flavor of the meat and veggies. I dip all cooked veggies and glass noodles in the dipping sauce too before I put in my mouth.
Then when my meat is almost gone, I put in the udon noodles they provide with me. When this is done cooking, I clean out the pot and pour whatever's cooked in the pot into the special "soup" bowl they provide. I sprinkle more green onions on top of the udon before I slur them up. This special soup bowl has some really tasty fish sauce, which makes great udon noodle soup with the last remaining cooked ingredients from the pot. I always cook my udon noodles last because this is when the boiling water becomes a good stock infused with the good flavor from all veggies and meat that were cooked in the water previously. I saw people cook the udon noodles immediately when the clear water boiled, but I don't know why since that water has no flavor and you can't really make noodle soup without good tasty broth.
I always empty my meat plate and veggie plate. Whatever Shabu I order, it always comes with a plate of veggies, and a bowl of steamed white or brown rice. It's a very filling and comforting meal even though I burnt my tongue a couple times because I ate too impatiently. I love Shabu-Shabu during fall and winter because it's just so warm and comforting.
I went here last night for dinner with the same order, the price was increased to $24 + tax. Yike! I'm beginning to feel the price is too high based on the lower quality of meat that they gave me. The meat quality last night wasn't as great as last time. It still tasted decent to me but nothing great. I also didn’t like the strong smell of bleach in my tableware and silverware. I understand that the restaurant may need to use bleach to disinfect the dishes, but the problem was, along with the smell of bleach, I could still smell that foul smell that is typical of dishes that weren't properly washed. If you have ever warmed up a deli roasted chicken in microwave, and let the dishes that once held that chicken meat pile up in the sink and you wash it with too little detergent and scrubbing, then you can smell that foul smell on your dishes. Or, if you wash a raw chicken in your sink but don't scrub down your sink thoroughly afterwards, you will also smell that hint of foul in your sink. It's the same smell of foul I was smelling last night, drifting from may be the stainless steel pot where my food was boiling, or from my silverware. Or it could just be the counter that was wiped repeatedly with the same dirty rags. The smell of bleach and foul just knocked down my enjoyment of the food quite a lot from my last visit.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that there was no separation of duty because I saw the staff who was wearing the gloves scoop rice with the same gloved hands that just sliced the raw frozen meat. Yes, the staff forgot to take the bloody gloves off! So the staff could be touching silverware, glasses and reaching into the rice bowl with the same gloved hands that just handled the raw meat. It really bothered me even though I know it wasn't intentional but it happened because the restaurant was busy. That's the problem, when the restaurant got busy, the dishes just didn't get washed properly and the counter was wiped with the same old rag that may have caused the foul smell. I missed the good old days years ago when I first came to this restaurant, when dishes and counter were odor free and clean, when they served a dish of complimentary pickled seaweed, when there was more meat on the plate and when the meat was in higher quality. Even customer service was better back then and the staff were more attentive. I don't mind the less attention due to the much increased customer volume now, but the meat quality and the smell of bleach and foul smell drifting from the counter and dishes bothered me.
I guess this is what happens when the management of the staff and procedures can't keep up with the rapid growth of the restaurant.
I may still return to this restaurant, but I'm not as crazy about this place as I once was when I was literally having dinner here several nights in a week.