Shabu Ya

Sometimes I just feel like eating something light and simple.

An aromatic broth, thinly sliced meat, and an abundance of vegetables.

When I'm in that mood, I often seek out shabu shabu (Japanese), or hot pot (Chinese). Although shabu is much cheaper to make at home, sometimes it's just a lot less hassle to pay the $10-$20 and have someone else take care of all that slicing, chopping, and washing of ingredients (not to mention doing all the dishes afterwards!).

The other day while we were in Harvard Square, I was craving just that - something simple, hearty, healthy, and warm. Our favorite shabu place felt just a bit too far away that day, so we decided to check out this local one within walking distance of our home.

The interior is bright and colorful, with trendy lamps, modern furniture, and tons of light. There's a sushi bar to one side, a huge "shabu" bar in the middle, and tons of other seating. The place seems to be filled with Asians, not a surprise considering the cuisine.

Things look promising in the beginning. Tiny bits of condiments such as fresh horseradish, habanero peppers, scallions, and Chinese "Satsa" sauce (BBQ sauce) come on this cute, modern plate.

The tables are equipped with induction stoves on top, which you can control by touching the nifty flat buttons. We order a spicy hot broth (check out that color!).

Most of the shabu plates come with meat of your choice, assorted vegetables, tofu, and noodles. The prices range from $12.95 (vegetables) to $20.95 (surf and turf). Although the presentation of everything was nice, I was not particularly impressed with the quality of the produce. The carrots and the broccoli reminded me of pre-chopped refrigerated vegetables that come from a bag. The other vegetables were average - sort of like vegetables you'd get in Chinatown, not ones from your local organic farmers market.

If you really want to splurge, they even have Wagyu beef from Australia ($29.99) and Oregon ($39.99). Our server wasn't very knowledgeable, and had to go back several times to ask about the difference between the two types.

After one round of questions, we learned that the Oregon beef was "better".

Bryan said, "can you tell us why it's better?"

She looked a bit confused, and then said, "hold on a minute."

She came back a few minutes later and declared that the Oregon beef was "more marbled."

Although it wasn't much information to go by, Bryan decided to spring for it. He's predictable in that way.

After having tried it, we both agreed that it's worth skipping. The Oregon wagyu beef, although tasty, wasn't that earth-shattering and probably not worth the significant extra premium price. It's nothing like the incredible kobe beef shabu that I had in Japan, which I would argue, is well worth the money (even if it was over $100 a person).

Because I had ordered a Korean dish, I was thrilled to get all the "freebies" that always come at the beginning of a meal in a Korean restaurant. These were solid, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.

My simple tofu stew ("suntofu") was delicious. It had tons of seafood inside, making the soup super flavorful, rich, and very, very comforting. It was exactly what I was craving. I was even content to ignore the bits of dirt (probably from the clams?) at the bottom of my bowl.

At $12.95, it wasn't a bad price at all.

The sushi, on the other hand, was below average, especially considering the price. Almost all of the fish (with the exception of salmon) had virtually no flavor and were reasonably bland. At $8.95 for 5 pieces, you can definitely do better elsewhere.

It seems like their sushi bar focuses more on the fun, creative rolls that rely more on spicy mayonnaise, tobiko, and various sauces for flavor than the actual fish. If I ever had to order sushi here again, I would choose to order rolls instead of straight up nigiri, which really needs quality fish to taste good.

Concluding Thought
I guess we had mixed thoughts about Shabu Ya. I really enjoyed simple yet flavorful tofu stew, which perfectly hit the spot. For simple Korean food, I may considering coming back.

However, I really was not impressed with the sushi, and definitely would not order it again.

The shabu is average. It's serviceable, for sure, but overall we just were not super impressed with the quality of the ingredients. I definitely would not recommend springing for the Wagyu. I think you can get a lot better meals in Boston if you're willing to spend close to $50 for your entree!

If you're in the area and you're hankering for shabu, the place will deliver. The broths are OK, the condiments are authentic, and the produce is acceptable. It's not terribly expensive (as long as you don't get Wagyu), and it's reasonably authentic. You can get your hot pot fix.

However, if you're willing to travel just a bit (we're talking maybe 1-2 miles), there are definitely much better places in Boston for shabu.


Shabu Ya
57 JFK Street
Cambridge MA

Seryna - Kobe Beef Shabu Shabu

Update:  This post was originally published on April 23, 2009 soon after I returned from Japan. I have since updated it with more pictures and more text in conjunction with A Culinary Tour of Asian Hot Pots as Part III of this mini-series.  The other part of this series can be found here: Part I: A Culinary Tour of Asian Hot Pots, and Part II: Preparing Filet Mignon For Hot Pot.

 -------------

Seryna is known to have one of the best Kobe beef shabu shabu in Japan.

I typically don't even eat much meat when I eat hot pot / shabu shabu because I just don't enjoy meat that much.  I find it sort of tough, dry, lacking in flavor.  I tend to focus on the vegetables because they have so much inherent flavor.  Honestly, on a typical hot pot night, I'll have at most one or two pieces of meat the entire night.

I realize now that I avoided the meat not because I did not like meat, but because I had never had really good meat.  REALLY good meat.  Meat that's decadent, buttery soft, and utterly deliciously full of flavor. Meat that has absolutely no hint of toughness when you chew it.  Meat that almost melts in your mouth.

Hello Kobe beef.  Shabu-shabu meat at its finest.  Really, it does not get better than this. 

The meat was SUPER soft - it almost seemed to melt in your mouth. The flavor of the fat was rich, but it didn't feel at all fatty in a bad way. As I've mentioned before in a previous post, Kobe beef has a higher percentage of monounsaturated fat (good fat). I wonder if that's why it doesn't taste greasy, but instead just rich, buttery, and absolute heavenly.

For $150 you get 150g of meat and a small portion of vegetables on the side. I have to say, after being used to US portion sizes, I was a bit disappointed with the vegetable sides. Literally, it was like 1 mushroom, 1 tofu piece, 2 leaves of lettuce, etc. Clearly, the focus was on the meat.

But man, it's really good. Although very expensive, I think it's worth trying once, because it's so different from any other type of meat.

At Seryna, they give you three types of sauces. A sesame paste, a ponzu sauce, and a spicy one. I liked all three. The spicy one was the most flavorful, but the ponzu sauce was crisp and light, and served as a nice light interlude between bites of meat with the heavier sauces.

The Japanese are meticulous about cleanliness.  Every diner receives a bib/apron of sorts to protect your clothing from any potential splashes or spills.

The waiter also periodically comes by and scoops out any stray bits that are floating in the broth. It's very important that the broth remains pure and clean.

At the end of the meal (which doesn't take that long since there's actually not THAT much food), you get a small bowl full of noodles. The waiter fills it with the delicious clear, kombu-based broth from your hot pot. The soup is clear, light, and cleansing after a rich meal.  A perfect finish to a perfect meal.

I highly recommend coming to Seryna and ordering the Kobe beef shabu. Compared to the meat you typically eat at a shabu shabu restaurant, it's like nothing you've ever had before. This and Kyubei were probably the two best meals I had in Japan.

On a side note, thinly sliced filet mignon is actually really good in shabu shabu as well, and much cheaper! Maybe in a future post I'll talk about Click here to find out how I purchase filet mignon meat from Costco, partially freeze it, and then thinly slice it myself for shabu shabu (hot pot) meals we have at home!

Enjoy!

Seryna - Kobe Beef Shabu Shabu

Update:  This post was originally published on April 23, 2009 soon after I returned from Japan. I have since updated it with more pictures and more text in conjunction with A Culinary Tour of Asian Hot Pots as Part III of this mini-series.  The other part of this series can be found here: Part I: A Culinary Tour of Asian Hot Pots, and Part II: Preparing Filet Mignon For Hot Pot.

 -------------

Seryna is known to have one of the best Kobe beef shabu shabu in Japan.

I typically don't even eat much meat when I eat hot pot / shabu shabu because I just don't enjoy meat that much.  I find it sort of tough, dry, lacking in flavor.  I tend to focus on the vegetables because they have so much inherent flavor.  Honestly, on a typical hot pot night, I'll have at most one or two pieces of meat the entire night.

I realize now that I avoided the meat not because I did not like meat, but because I had never had really good meat.  REALLY good meat.  Meat that's decadent, buttery soft, and utterly deliciously full of flavor. Meat that has absolutely no hint of toughness when you chew it.  Meat that almost melts in your mouth.

Hello Kobe beef.  Shabu-shabu meat at its finest.  Really, it does not get better than this. 

The meat was SUPER soft - it almost seemed to melt in your mouth. The flavor of the fat was rich, but it didn't feel at all fatty in a bad way. As I've mentioned before in a previous post, Kobe beef has a higher percentage of monounsaturated fat (good fat). I wonder if that's why it doesn't taste greasy, but instead just rich, buttery, and absolute heavenly.

For $150 you get 150g of meat and a small portion of vegetables on the side. I have to say, after being used to US portion sizes, I was a bit disappointed with the vegetable sides. Literally, it was like 1 mushroom, 1 tofu piece, 2 leaves of lettuce, etc. Clearly, the focus was on the meat.

But man, it's really good. Although very expensive, I think it's worth trying once, because it's so different from any other type of meat.

At Seryna, they give you three types of sauces. A sesame paste, a ponzu sauce, and a spicy one. I liked all three. The spicy one was the most flavorful, but the ponzu sauce was crisp and light, and served as a nice light interlude between bites of meat with the heavier sauces.

The Japanese are meticulous about cleanliness.  Every diner receives a bib/apron of sorts to protect your clothing from any potential splashes or spills.

The waiter also periodically comes by and scoops out any stray bits that are floating in the broth. It's very important that the broth remains pure and clean.

At the end of the meal (which doesn't take that long since there's actually not THAT much food), you get a small bowl full of noodles. The waiter fills it with the delicious clear, kombu-based broth from your hot pot. The soup is clear, light, and cleansing after a rich meal.  A perfect finish to a perfect meal.

I highly recommend coming to Seryna and ordering the Kobe beef shabu. Compared to the meat you typically eat at a shabu shabu restaurant, it's like nothing you've ever had before. This and Kyubei were probably the two best meals I had in Japan.

On a side note, thinly sliced filet mignon is actually really good in shabu shabu as well, and much cheaper! Maybe in a future post I'll talk about Click here to find out how I purchase filet mignon meat from Costco, partially freeze it, and then thinly slice it myself for shabu shabu (hot pot) meals we have at home!

Enjoy!

Little Q Hot Pot (Quincy)

Little Q is my favorite hot pot (shabu shabu) restaurant in the Boston area.

Why? The reason is simple. The broth.


The quality of the broth is key because you're essentially cooking your own dinner with raw ingredients they give you. Here, the broth is really good - kind of addictive actually (I've known more than one person, myself included, who could not stop drinking the broth straight out of a teacup long after the meal was over). My favorite is the mala broth, which is really hot and spicy, but also wonderfully fragrant with a mix of many Chinese herbs.

Because the Mala is so spicy, it's a good idea to have a "ying yang" hot pot where you get half spicy broth and half herbal broth (see picture below).

I personally think getting high quality meat is really important. Although the meat here was nothing like the kobe beef that I had in Japan, I still enjoyed the meat here. I think the lamb was especially tasty here. We also ordered the "choice beef", which I found to be rather ordinary. It might just be worth the $20 to order the highest grade meat.

Little Q is being forced out of its current location by the city, which has other plans for the shopping center. Currently, all the other tenants in that building have vacated. Little Q is fighting to stay in that location until the end of the year. Rumor has it that they have secured a space in Boston. I'm excited about that, because I would definitely go more often!

Update! Little Q has since opened TWO locations, one in Boston and one in Arlington!

Related Articles
Shabu Square (shabu restaurant in Harvard Square)
Seryna (Real Kobe beef Shabu in Japan)
Wagyu Beef - the Kobe of America

Little Q Hot Pot (Quincy)

Little Q is my favorite hot pot (shabu shabu) restaurant in the Boston area.

Why? The reason is simple. The broth.

The quality of the broth is key because you're essentially cooking your own dinner with raw ingredients they give you. Here, the broth is really good - kind of addictive actually (I've known more than one person, myself included, who could not stop drinking the broth straight out of a teacup long after the meal was over). My favorite is the mala broth, which is really hot and spicy, but also wonderfully fragrant with a mix of many Chinese herbs.

Because the Mala is so spicy, it's a good idea to have a "ying yang" hot pot where you get half spicy broth and half herbal broth (see picture below).

I personally think getting high quality meat is really important. Although the meat here was nothing like the kobe beef that I had in Japan, I still enjoyed the meat here. I think the lamb was especially tasty here. We also ordered the "choice beef", which I found to be rather ordinary. It might just be worth the $20 to order the highest grade meat.

Little Q is being forced out of its current location by the city, which has other plans for the shopping center. Currently, all the other tenants in that building have vacated. Little Q is fighting to stay in that location until the end of the year. Rumor has it that they have secured a space in Boston. I'm excited about that, because I would definitely go more often!

Related Articles
Shabu Square (shabu restaurant in Harvard Square)
Seryna (Real Kobe beef Shabu in Japan)
Wagyu Beef - the Kobe of America

Shabu Square - update CLOSED

Bryan and I decided to try out Shabu Square, the new shabu restuarant in Harvard Square this past Saturday (coincidentally, it was Valentine's Day). Here is the quick summary of my opinion:

Prices: For Harvard Square, reasonable - $10 for a vegetarian shabu order and $16 for a "surf & turf" shabu shabu order. There is a minimum $10/per person requirement.

Ambiance: Nice. The space was completely renovated for this restaurant, so everything is nice and new. It has the ambiance of a Japanese restaurant - clean, simple, and sort of bamboo-y.

Quality: so-so. The vegetables were fine, but the seafood was lower quality. The scallops had no sweetness. In fact, they hardly had any flavor. The beef was fine, but nothing to write home about. They did not have some of the fancier cuts of meat we have seen at other shabu places. They also have a limited number of broth options: Spicy Chinese, Tom Yum, Korean Kim chee, and miso. We tried Spicy Chinese ($3), which was spicy but did not have much deep flavor. We also tried the plain chicken broth (free). In terms of food quality, it is definitely a step lower than the other shabu places we've tried (Shabu-Zen, Kaze, Little Q). [my absolute favorite hot pot place is Little Q, especially the mala spicy broth. SOOO GOOOOD! Too bad it's so far away in Quincy!]

Other comments: We ordered a funny appetizer, mostly because it sounded so strange. It was salmon sashimi rolled inside roti (Malaysian bread) with spicy mayo.

In theory it sounded interesting, but the taste was actually quite average. The roti was deep fried and quite greasy. Since the restaurant did not have a sushi bar, we started to suspect that they just used their hot pot salmon meat and chose not to cook it. Fortunately, neither of us got sick, so I'm going to assume that the fish was fine.

No alcohol, which might be a big negative for some people.

This place is almost like an Asian fusion restaurant run by Chinese people. On top of the shabu menu, they also have pho, Thai dishes (like pad thai and the like), Japanese noodles, etc.

Conclusion: I like having a shabu place in Harvard Square since we can just walk to this restaurant. It is a nice, healthy option in Harvard Square for a decent price. I understand that it's more expensive to run a restaurant in Harvard Square, so I appreciate their efforts to keep the prices reasonable. Just remember, you do get what you pay for. Bryan decided that, if he were to come again, he'd probably just order the beef shabu since the seafood was underwhelming. I would probably stick with the vegetarian shabu.

As a side point, recently my brother in law bought filet mignon from Costco and sliced it up for a hot pot that we were having at my sister's birthday party. It was sooooo good! Yes, he had to slice the meat himself, but the texture of filet mignon cannot be beat. Now that I've had filet mignon at a hot pot, it's hard for me to go back to eating normal hot pot meat. This is why I would probably order the vegetarian option at Shabu Square.

Shabu Square - update CLOSED

Bryan and I decided to try out Shabu Square, the new shabu restuarant in Harvard Square this past Saturday (coincidentally, it was Valentine's Day). Here is the quick summary of my opinion:

Prices: For Harvard Square, reasonable - $10 for a vegetarian shabu order and $16 for a "surf & turf" shabu shabu order. There is a minimum $10/per person requirement.

Ambiance: Nice. The space was completely renovated for this restaurant, so everything is nice and new. It has the ambiance of a Japanese restaurant - clean, simple, and sort of bamboo-y.

Quality: so-so. The vegetables were fine, but the seafood was lower quality. The scallops had no sweetness. In fact, they hardly had any flavor. The beef was fine, but nothing to write home about. They did not have some of the fancier cuts of meat we have seen at other shabu places. They also have a limited number of broth options: Spicy Chinese, Tom Yum, Korean Kim chee, and miso. We tried Spicy Chinese ($3), which was spicy but did not have much deep flavor. We also tried the plain chicken broth (free). In terms of food quality, it is definitely a step lower than the other shabu places we've tried (Shabu-Zen, Kaze, Little Q). [my absolute favorite hot pot place is Little Q, especially the mala spicy broth. SOOO GOOOOD! Too bad it's so far away in Quincy!]

Other comments: We ordered a funny appetizer, mostly because it sounded so strange. It was salmon sashimi rolled inside roti (Malaysian bread) with spicy mayo.

In theory it sounded interesting, but the taste was actually quite average. The roti was deep fried and quite greasy. Since the restaurant did not have a sushi bar, we started to suspect that they just used their hot pot salmon meat and chose not to cook it. Fortunately, neither of us got sick, so I'm going to assume that the fish was fine.

No alcohol, which might be a big negative for some people.

This place is almost like an Asian fusion restaurant run by Chinese people. On top of the shabu menu, they also have pho, Thai dishes (like pad thai and the like), Japanese noodles, etc.

Conclusion: I like having a shabu place in Harvard Square since we can just walk to this restaurant. It is a nice, healthy option in Harvard Square for a decent price. I understand that it's more expensive to run a restaurant in Harvard Square, so I appreciate their efforts to keep the prices reasonable. Just remember, you do get what you pay for. Bryan decided that, if he were to come again, he'd probably just order the beef shabu since the seafood was underwhelming. I would probably stick with the vegetarian shabu.

As a side point, recently my brother in law bought filet mignon from Costco and sliced it up for a hot pot that we were having at my sister's birthday party. It was sooooo good! Yes, he had to slice the meat himself, but the texture of filet mignon cannot be beat. Now that I've had filet mignon at a hot pot, it's hard for me to go back to eating normal hot pot meat. This is why I would probably order the vegetarian option at Shabu Square.