Sakae Shabu Shabu

Hi again everyone,

This Saturday, my husband, our housekeeper and myself decided to try out what claims to be the only Shabu Shabu buffet in Singapore. This was once again also run by the Sakae Sushi Group of companies.

However, at the moment the Shabu Shabu buffet is only avalable at the Sakae Sushi outlet in West Coast Plaza or the former Ginza Plaza. Thus, when I called for directions on Friday evening, neither of the two staff members I spoke to could give me any directions and the manager was no where to be found.

Finally, on Saturday morning, we consulted our trusty GPSs on our cell phones which took us directly there. When we get there though, my husband was no longer hungry and said he would sit with us but would have something from the a la carte menu while the two of us had the shabu shabu buffet. This created something of a problem with the staff who kept repeating that all three of us had to have the buffet. After about a patient 5 mins or so of this, we asked to speak to the manager who then conceded to allow my husband to sit with us.

Well, after those few initial hiccups, most of the lunch went rather smoothly. We were given a choice of stock - sake-infused chicken, chicken, kimchii or seafood.
We started with the chicken broth and were given an extensive list of ingriedients to choose from. We chose a selection of seafood such as scallops on the half shell, clams,salmon fillets,threadfin fillets, squid and mussels on the half shell.

We also chose about 5 types of mushrooms, soft tofu, leeks and long cabbage. For meats, we ordered some chicken and beef shabu shabu slices, some tori kariage (deep fried chicken), ebi(prawn) tempura and chawanmushi (steamed egg) which all came complimentary with the buffet.

The three accompanying sauces were all delicious with a ponzu sauce for the meats, a chilli type sauce and a sesame sauce for the seafood. My husband and I were a little disappointed that the sauces were not explained to us but we figured it out being the Shabu Shabu veterans that we are and in turn educated our housekeeper.

The stock tasted homemade, nutritious and very delicious and every morsel of meat or seafood we put in it to cook came out tasting lovely. Of course since Shabu Shabu is essentially a hotpot meal cooked yourselves, the temperature of the stock and how long you leave the raw ingredients to stew all play a big part in the overall outcome of the meal. That being said, the term shabu shabu refers to the swishing sound a thinly sliced pieces of meat makes when held between two chopsticks and swirled around in the boiling stock till cooked which should normally be about no longer than three and a half seconds. As such we were rather shocked by the large chunks of chicken meat which had to be placed in the stock for at least a good 5 mins before they were close to edible.

The seafood was mostly a real delight with the prawns being large and luscious, the salmon very sweet and the scallops succulent. We enjoyed them so much that we ordered some more of each which promptly arrived. However, the extra Tori Kariage and Ebi tempura we ordered never materialised despite several reminders.

My husband ended up having just a cup of green tea which I get for free anyway since I am a Sakae Sushi VIP Card member. I, who am an avid still iced water drinker, was told that with the buffet plain water was not on the house and I had to order the bottled water of which they only had the oxygenated variety. Oh well, despite all, we did have some very good food for the price paid which I believe was close to
S$21.00 a person and will go back soon, hoping that by then they would have sorted out their (again hopefully) what were initial difficulties.

Cheers and hope everyone had a roaring F1 weekend.