Shabu House - CBD

One of the things I enjoy most in winter is Hot Pot, where you and a group of people sit around a simmering pot of soup, and toss in raw meats and veges to cook it yourself. Its homey and warms you right up. Its one of those seasonal things that can be compared to eating ice cream in winter (i.e. only for those who are not faint at heart). Being someone who likes to challenge theories, I went to Shabu House despite it being summer.

Upon arriving, I was pleasantly surprised to find the place to be relatively busy for a weekday. We asked for a table of three and were promptly seated.

There are three choices of soups being Tom Yum, Miso and Fish. I opted for miso.

Now in my opinon, what sets Shabu House apart from all its other competition (Little Lamb, Bestaurant, 100 degrees hot pot) is that other than just hot pot, you also get to choose from a large selection of sushi. There were quite a few seafood options, including crab, salmon and tuna, in addition to chicken and California rolls. In my opinion, for a store that sells such a broad variety of foods, one cannot hold too high an expectation for the quality of individual dishes. To this note, Shabu House offers sushi of quite a high quality. I have had sushi in quite a number of more general buffets and each time I have found it to be quite horrible. No doubt it is not up to the same quality as Sushi Train or Oishii, but I found it to be really quite decent. The rice was well seasoned, the fish was fresh and the turnaround was high.

In terms of the hot pot itself, there was a large variety of foods to cook. For its seafood selection, it had some fish, prawns, octopus and mussels. Pretty decent for $32.

Water, like everything else was on a DIY basis.

In terms of meat, they have pork and beef as well as chicken. They also have a nice selection of noodles which you can also cook in the pot. Aside from this, they also have a number of pre cooked hot food such as fried chicken wings and fried rice which I didnt try (because I was too busy with all the other stuff)

Overall, I had a really great night at ShabuHouse. It's not exactly traditional Japanese Hot Pot (being run by Koreans), but they do make a great effort to make it as authentic as possible, and its a great deal for the price.

Price Range: Lunch $23 Dinner $32

Taste: 7/10

Value: 8.5/10

Service: 7/10

Environment: 8/10