Shabuhouse
Level 1 70 Mary St Brisbane
2.5/5
Shabuhouse has caught my eye for a while now, but with
university obligations and a challenging living situation for the last few
months I haven’t had the chance to try it out. I finally got a Friday free and after scrounging up a dining
partner, it was the first place on my mind. Its promising premise was something
I couldn’t ignore, being the voracious fan of hotpot that I am; always on the
lookout for a new hotpot I haven’t eaten a dozen times before.
Shabuhouse has a great design; the heavy use of pine combined
with fake potted plants gives it a fresh, clean appearance. The service, like
many of the new Asian restaurants in this city, is great. Call bells on the
table alert waiters and a particularity was their accommodation in serving
outside their published hours (we ordered at around quarter past 3pm and their
kitchen closes at 3pm).
As with all reviews, we must move onto the specifics, the
Shabu Shabu (Wikipedia has more on Shabu-shabu), which is both disappointing and satisfying at the same time.
The hotpots are served individually and surprisingly take very little of the
excitement and energy out of the very social activity that hotpot is.
However, the shape of the pots used at Shabuhouse make the activity
feel slightly cramped, there’s very little space to reach into the deep pots while
trying to avoid being burnt.
Also disappointing was the use of frozen meat. In the scheme
of things, being frozen or not makes very little difference, but the presentation
of frozen meat makes you question its quality.
Other than those few complaints I could find little to whine
about and thought the food was good, with the broth having the expected strong
fishy flavour.
I will return to Shabuhouse very soon, partially because the
love with illusion of place the decor creates for me, but also because it’s a
cheap hotpot without having to go to Spring Hill (Bishamon in spring hill).
Shabuhouse is open Monday to Saturday for Lunch and Dinner.
Our meals cost $12.80 each for shabu shabu with beef. However,
this is the lunch price and it is more expensive for dinner
Shabuhouse is BYO with a $2 per person corkage charge
Shabuhouse’s website is at http://www.shabuhouse.com.au
Thank-you to Theo for doing the editing. I'm pretty dreadful at editing my own work.
Hey there. Freezing the meat makes it much easier to slice into really thin slices.
ReplyDeleteThey must freeze beef or pork slightly for slicing very thinly.
ReplyDeleteI understand that freezing makes it very easy to slice very thin, but it doesn't need to be this thin. Its more an aesthetic issue then anything else, little buckets of frozen meat hardly look like meat at all.
ReplyDelete