This is a part of a 3 part series of ‘an Indian in Japan’. Read earlier post here: earlier
In a nutshell:
Loved the food that we were having for the first time in life. The English speaking waiting staff helped warmly to teach us how it is eaten, what’s the best combination etc.
Food type – Shabu Shabu (non vegetarian)
Address: Shabuzen Yotsuya
Contact details : +81 3-3354-2941
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
Facebook: NA
Reservation site : https://savorjapan.com/
Description:
As mentioned in my earlier posts, the trip to Japan was organized by Neil Patil & team, Veena World, Mumbai. Neil is an avid traveller himself & shares the same passion about food like we do. So Neil’s personal suggestions on every food & experience in the trip worked really well for us. We paid to Veena World for visa services, air travel, local taxi in few places, guide services, stay. Food was on us & so was most of the local travel.
Neil mentioned the dishes that we should try & also choices of restaurants. This restaurant was recommended by him.
We went to the location as per google & entered a restaurant. The name of the restaurant at the entrance was in Japanese & as we sat, the menu card was in 100% Japanese too.
We told the person serving us ‘Shabhu shabu’. He told us we were in the wrong restaurant. Shabu zen was next door, in the same building. So this in a problem for non Japanese. Google takes you to the location but if there are multiple restaurants with all names in Japanese, there is no way to understand!!! This was our first such experience.
The staff member who served us was English speaking. He was extremely warm & helpful. He taught us how to do the combinations, how to hold the meat pieces & sway them in the boiling water to cook them etc.
Shabu shabu conceptually is as follows
- The table has
-
- a burner attached to it or a portable burner is brought to the table.
- Water is boiled in a common pot on the burner.
- Separately vegetables & thin slices of different kinds of meats are served in plates
- Guests pick the vegetables & meats one by one, dip in the boiling water with chopsticks & get the food back to their individual plates & eat just as it is or by dipping in either or both the sauces.
- The soup this created, is not had. It’s thrown away.
Shabu shabu is eaten with 2 kinds of sauce – fermented soy sauce (brown) & Sesame sauce (pinkish off white) – see pictures below.
A Tiny ball of pepper paste was also given, to spice up the bite.
Shabu zen specializes in Black beef in addition to the famous wagyu from Kobe region.
Loved the taste of black beef. Never had this before. This was much tastier & juicier than the usual beef that I have had in China or other far eastern countries.
Eating Wagyu is almost like a drink – Juices gushing into the mouth with every bite. The experience almost gives a high!!!
We had the meats just as it is. It felt less on salt but obviously had only meat flavours.
We liked it with the fermented soy sauce. The meat flavours were high & taste was very good. The sesame dip taste was the best but it took away a bit from the flavours of the meat.
Combo (a quickly dip in one followed by the other) was really nice too.
Wow. New food. Fab experience. Memorable
One thought on “Shabuzen Yotsuya – an Indian tourist in Japan (yotsuya tokyo)”