Prime Rib Shabu

This is by far the best Shabu place I’ve been to in sf. I love the atmosphere and the staff.
My favorite thing is that they have thin sliced beef and also hand cut beef. The hand cut is great because its thicker so if you don’t like your steak cooked all the way through you can just leave it in the broth for a few seconds and it’s cooked medium.
Also, always get the spicy miso broth. It’s the best and not too spicy.

Wonderful choice for a cold cold night.
The How
Staff places a pot on an induction cook top. You choose how spicy you want your broth. The broth is what you use to cook your meat. If you are on a date or with a friend and one of you likes your broth spicier then the other, then you can ask for a two compartment pot, best of both worlds!
Upon making and ordering your selection, staff brings out your choice and a basket of udon noodles, tofu, tofu skin, and greens.
Dip your meat and veggies in the hot broth and cook them to your desired taste.
The Taste
We ordered the prime rib beef. It’s actually quality meat thinly sliced. We made our own dipping sauce with what was on the table in the condiment jars, green onions, hot peppers, soy sauce, and two kinds of hot sauce. I like my beef slightly raw dipped in my special sauce. Yum!
The Ambience
The room is divided down the middle by a partition with tables on each side. This makes it a bit cozy. The noise level is low, but you can hear across the room. There was a large party and there were many couples and families eating.
The Service
Attentive and responsive.
WARNING
They changed my credit card charge by adding more of a tip then what I gave. I recommend you pay cash.
Summary.
The meat was good. There service and ambience was so-​so, especially after discovering them changing my credit card payment. I would go back, but I would only pay with cash.

AYCE YOOOO!!! you can’t so no to that. For $ 26/​person, you can eat as much seafood, vegetables, thinly sliced meat, and thinly cut lamb shoulder meat as you desire. Hand cut meat is limited 2 plates per person. The hand cut is definitely the BEST… nice and fatty and perfect with the spicy miso broth. You can also ask for the 2 flavor one, so we got chicken broth in the one. On a Sunday night, it’s not busy, so the waiter is pretty attentive. He forgot the hot sake we asked and after the third time, he gave us another one on the house.
It is more of a chinese place, but they just tailor to the customers. I asked for oyster sauce, since I like the thicker sauce with my meat.

Litigious ADA Hater Trolls shut this place down and it was a sad dark time in my life.
It is back and IT FEELS GOOD! This place is like cheers
Tofu skin! Machine Cut! Dipping Sauce (baws)! FTW! Roll one up homie!

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write a review right away but here goes.
Rating: 3.5
The bad:
1. Poor service — we made a reservation on a Thursday night for 3 at 7pm. While we were seated right away, there was not hostess or anyone who would take our order for over 10 minutes. We finally had to wave our arm frantically to get someone’s attention and even then the waitress just gave us a nod, walked around other tables a couple more times and then finally took our order. NOT COOL.
2. Sauce — where is the ponzu? where is the minced garlic? where is the minced daikon? What is this crap of pre-​made sauce put in front of me? Sorry for being harsh, but i had no idea what this sauce is. Definitely does not taste like ponzu. Maybe watered down soy sauce? I don’t usually add parsley to my sauce and my bowl was filled with it. I compromised by adding a lot of chili oil… but it wasn’t the same.
3. Why is it so hard to get an extra bowl around here?
The good/​OK:
1. Hand cut prime rib was very tasty. Plate is really small though and they only limit you to 2 plates of it for all-you-can-eat…doesn’t that defeat the purpose of all you can eat?
2. No Udon, only glass noodle or this other white flat flour noodle
3. Fresh enoki mushrooms and tofu. The veggie dish was surprisingly pretty good
4. Spicy miso broth was good but wish it was spicier
I think i would give it a second chance. Though this place would have rocked my world if it had the right kind of ponzu sauce and udon.

Just reopened this week after a three month closure for remodeling. The remodel looks nice — they are now ADA compliant! They are wheelchair accessible and the remodeled bathroom now is huge!
Their food is still on point and open now in time for the fall/​winter cold weather season. Shabu def warms the soul!

So much cilantro in the dipping sauce. Disgusting.
They will accommodate if you don’t like cilantro.
The things you can add to your sauce: green onions, satay sauce, and I think XO sauce. Not very shabu-​like, seems super Chinesey. And yes, it’s owned by Chinese people.
Service is super slow. I literally had my hand raised in the air for a few minutes like I was in grade school just to get their attention to refill our food. The sad part is, our plates of meat had BEEN empty for about 10 minutes already.
I just had one refill of meat and gave up.
They have some strange thick cut beef that is hard to chew.
The vermicelli noodles are strange — they’re cut into 6 inch sticks. What the heck? Seriously??? Stingy!

This is Canto style shabu shabu (if you consider Mum’s and Shabuway Japanese style). All you can eat is $ 25.95 but the whole table must do it. Since all the other limited dishes are just one kind and one plate that costs around $ 18.95, we opted for all you can eat. We ate a lot!
Service is great. Our Canto waiter was hilarious and really nice! Efficient and prompt service. They were super responsive and suggested to us to cook our meat medium rare (I wish I knew that before!). He gave us candies at the end of our meal.
The food and ingredients are better than Café Mum’s. The sauce is soy sauce with green onions and you can put Chinese BBQ or hot oily sauce in there too. I like the tofu and fish balls. The pot has a separator in the middle so you can still eat with someone if they are sick. They had thin cut, thick cut and lamb. They also had imitation crab, shrimp (we didn’t eat that) and basket of spinach, cabbage, tofu, udon and clear noodles. We got the chicken broth, which was pretty good.
Parking wasn’t too bad but you may have to circle about a bit. Don’t sit next to the door or in the directly of the draft or you might be cold.
I would come back! Some people were there before we were seated and still eating! I didn’t know SF ppl ate so late on a weeknight!

The BEST Japanese Shabu Shabu (hot pot) buffet in SF. Unlike other shabu shabu spots (ahem i.e. Mum’s Café), this one has many different types of meat, seafood and veggies.
The hand cut prime rib is by far the best meat you’ll have here, or anywhere else for that sake. I think I had 3 full plates of it last year and last weekend again. For only ~$ 23 you get all you can eat (comes with solid seafood too: imitation crab, fish balls, etc.) and differing noodles, broths (your choice between spicy miso or regular chicken), and the regular cut shabu shabu (plain, but still good quality and not fatty at all).
The owner and staff are the best around, they keep coming out to refill the meat and seafood and don’t skimp on anything.
A great experience and I highly recommend having a large group party here.

More of a Chinese style hot pot than Japanese. But i think I prefer the former anyway.
They have an excellent hand cut ribeye, the thicker slices allow for you to cook your beef medium rare. The also have the regular thin cut ribeye, lamb and seafood options.
For broth, the have an excelletn spicy miso broth and a plain chicken broth, but you can opt for the split pot with both boiling together. You can kick up the broths even more with the sauces on the table, they have the chinese «bbq» sauce, which is like a fermented bean paste, chili oil, and scallions.
They also give you a tasty dipping sauce that I also doctored up myself.
The veggie dish that comes with the meal includes tong ho, watercress, tofu, bean curd, vermicelli, a thicker noodle, and enoki mushrooms.
$ 1 oysters and $ 1 sake shots all hours!
With Little Sheep Hot Pot quite a drive away, this place is not a bad alternative in the City.

Before tonight, I’d never had shabu. Or do you always have to say «shabu shabu.» That’s what the sign outside leads me to believe. Anyway, tonight I had shamu shamu. This means thinly sliced prime rib. I actually don’t know what it means.
Anyway, you dunk this raw beef in a bowl of spicy miso broth (don’t go with the chicken broth if you want to be respected). Oh but before that, you dump in all these noodles and vegetables and mushrooms into that boiling pot of broth. It’s like beef soup, DIY-​style.
Quick Tip; go here, get the hand cut prime rib and slurp away.

We came here early on a Tuesday night and there was only one other table occupied. The space is nice and the server was pretty attentive. We had my 4 yo niece with us and he thought she was really cute, so he kept coming back to talk to her.
Anyway, the price is a bit more expensive than other shabu places. We had two pots so we got one with the spicy miso broth and one with the chicken broth. I ordered the seafood plate and the other people in my party ordered the regular rib-​eye and the hand-​cut rib-​eye as well as the lamb. They only had one kind of dipping sauce. There wasn’t too much of a variety of vegetables.
It was really just okay. I’d definitely go to Shabu House over Prime Rib Shabu.

Went on a Friday night w/​o reservations and still was able to get seated relatively quickly.
It’s a little bit darker insider, a little bit more intimate than other Shabu houses. There were a bunch of other couples so this could be a cool date night spot. (
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Since a regular thin cut rib eye plate is about $ 17 and $ 19 bucks for the hand cut rib eye, it made more sense to do the all you can eat for $ 26. I mean seriously, what’s one plate of meat gonna do for me? I get my moneys worth yo! (
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The spicy miso broth is a little low on flavor and so is the soy/​green onion dipping sauce. When doing the ayce, after about the 4^th plate of meat, everything just starts tasting the same. (
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Here’s the seafood plate — (
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3.5 stars is about right with quantity over quality.

We read about this place in the paper and had to come check it out.
Really good hand cut rib eye! Prices are good too. Next time I would get an extra order of udon or maybe the all-​you-​can-​eat just because it’s only $ 25 and I could’ve used another half a plate or so of meat.
Good and attentive service too. Yummy!

Prime Rib Shabu… I am so over all the other shabu places I have been to. Now this is what I call Prime Shabu.
My friend had gone here several times and decided today was the day to go and try it out. We went for almost an hour workout and was starving by the time we got here. Our waiter came to us quickly and took our orders. We had the prime rib cut special.
I believe we had the miso spicy broth with the special sauce. The broth is good with a hint of spice. Though I wish it was spicier but it will do. Japanese cuisines are not known for their spice so I don’t hold it against them. I do love their special sauce use to dip our ribeye as well as our greens.
The food came promptly although they were a little bit confused as to what we order. Not sure what that was about. I needed a coke and they got it as quickly as possible. I like that. Services wise, I thought they were on top of things. The food was very good compared to all the other shabu restaurants I have been to. Not disappointed at all.
Will definitely give them a try again. Might have to try the all you can eat for $ 25.95 one of these day. Only minus I would have to say is that they don’t give you dessert. Hopefully that will change in time.
My friend and I had to stop by a crêpe place for dessert just to fulfill that sweet tooth.

Coming here, I think the name is a little deceptive — even though the name says «Shabu», the place really is more like a Chinese hot pot than Japanese shabu. That said, the food here is still decent enough regardless, but I think people may need to change their expectations beforehand.
Obviously, if you come here, you’re looking at the shabu orders, and they have a few different plates you can order. Their main feature is the raw prime rib (thin and thicker cuts), along with platters of lamb, seafood (clams, shrimp, fish balls, etc), and veggies. Regardless of which ones you choose, you also get a tray of standard items that include noodles, tofu, additional vegetables, and enoki mushrooms.
They also offer an all-​you-​can-​eat option for something like $ 27 or $ 28 (can’t remember exactly, but in that range) and I would definitely suggest going that route. The individual platters go for about $ 15-​$ 18 roughly, and one person can easily polish off their own order. My two friends and I thought it would be more economical to go with the individual platters, but we quickly realized it wasn’t going to be enough.
Regardless of whether it’s more Chinese or Japanese, the food here is still relatively decent. The broth actually has some flavor and seasoning, and it’ll actually develop into a soup quite easily (unlike my trip to Coriya) while the house dipping suace they give you is not too shabby (you can add more sauces to it to make it your own). I would still defer to Shabu House or the places in Japantown for the real deal, but I’d gladly come here over Coriya.

Having heard about this spot from Patra B. and reading a local newspaper review, it was only a matter of time before my appetite would drive me here. Located in the difficult to park part of the Richmond District, we agreed to have dinner here on a foggy weekday evening. A friend who would later dine there too gave us recommendations on what to order. We still studied the menu and their ala carte entrée selections mostly ranged from $ 16.00 to $ 19.00. Being hungry and with some serious eaters, we decided on the $ 25.95 all you can eat menu. The next options were choosing the broth base; we chose a split pot of clear broth and spicy broth. (
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In reading previous reviews, the menu seemed more extensive than what we actually received. The seafood selection seemed a bit weak as the only highlight were the shell-​on prawns. For some reason, I don’t really count fish balls or fish cakes as seafood. There were yuba slices (fu juk), cabbage, green veggies (tong hok). Napa cabbage, rice noodles, and egg noodles, served in one community plate. There were also three meat plates with sliced lamb, «hand-​cut» rib eye beef, and «machine-​cut» rib-​eye beef, with limits of two plates. The hand-​cut is tender and tastier and the machine cut had a slight pre-​frozen flavor to it, but is easier to cook. They give you a small dipping bowl with their pre-​made sauce (soy, green onion, cilantro, etc.) and there are three small jars with red chili oil, Satay sauce (probably a Taiwanese brand), and diced green onions for flavor customizing. We ended up ordering a second round of everything and barely finished the food. Pretty amazing, considering we didn’t have any rice (guess the rice and egg noodles were enough).
The diners were after-​work friends, families, and neighborhood diners. Sorry, no raw food pictures as my companions were starving and started cooking before I could turn on my camera.
Before leaving, our friend returned and just started his meal. This is how we learned about their «SECRET» menu. He ordered the Cioppino, which included Dungeness crab, clams, and mussels. He also mentioned that they had a great deal on Kumamoto oysters, raw on the half shell. Guess we’ll have to save that for next time.

Go for the glory and spring for the all you can eat. Just because the single orders will probably leave you lingering for more.
So there was supposed to be a big group of us that dwindled down to four. The owner was super accommodating, and didn’t falter when we cut the group size down to half. We ordered the all you can eat, and beer at ½ off, and off we go.
The hand cut rib eye was by far the best. At the end, we just kept asking for plates of that.
It’s definitely more Chinese hot pot style than Japanese shabu shabu, so expect that walking in the door.

I’m sick of the all-​you-​can-​eat hot pot places with crappy meat! Notice I didn’t call it a shabu shabu place because it’s really Chinese hot pot.
We started out ordering specific plates, but one glance at the plate, and I knew I would not be full. So yes, I convinced the table to switch to the all-​you-​can-​eat plan… AND I ATE ALL I COULD, which is a lot! Their policy is that the entire table must order the all-​you-​can-​eat to even get it. FYI.
They try to fill you up by bringing you veggies and fish and squid balls, so we would go straight for the lamb and hand-​sliced meat. We ordered shrimp on the side… They tend to slow down after a few rounds though, so you have to try extra hard to get their attention. :-/​
All-​you-​can-​eat is the way to go though. Beers and house sake are half off if you do so, so the bill after several hours of face-​stuffing and strategic hiding of certain veggie items [I actually ordered more watercress — yum!] came to about $ 45/​person. Not bad, considering we ordered some non-​half off items also.
Definitely worth a revisit when I need a few extra meaty pounds without extra grease. And if you’re looking for a raw egg to add to your sauce or something to skim the fat off the top of the broth, just ask!

–Hand cut rib eye
–Thin cut rib eye
–Thin cut Lamb
–Seafood– shrimp, clams, two different types of fishballs, Kamobukuro (japanese fish cakes), oysters and imitation crab
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!
ALL YOU CAN EAT is the way to go! Too bad its only TUES, WED, THURS but for 25.95 you can fill yourself with all the meat and seafood till your belly bursts or you pass out from food coma. I came here last night with my two good buddies. We ate for over TWO hrs, yes over TWO hrs!!! We got there around 730pm and ate until they closed. Since it was our first time here we wanted to try everything so we started off with one plate of seafood, one plate of hand cut meat and one plate of thin meat. The seafood was very fresh and the plate was decently packed
The hand cut rib eye seen here :

was tasty. The thin cut rib eye was also very good and fresh.
I can tell when a place uses fresh beef. I refuse to eat old beef, it has this cowy flavor to it that i can’t
just disgusts me when a restaurant uses old beef. meh. Lastly the lamb, for some reason i can’t seem to like lamb for shabu shabu.
To me it has a funny taste to it and after i eat so much it jest tastes nasty to me. Afterward they brought us what ever we wanted, you can mix it up and ask them to bring what ever you like. eg. We got a lot more shrimp and noodles and meat of course. lols
The broth was just a plain light broth which did the trick but i wished that they had at least a few more to chose from. A little variety is always good, maybe a spicy miso and something else.
They also gave us a very good housemade dipping sauce. The udon noodles are the frozen ones: PASS. The vermicelli noodles were yummy, i can never get enough of these silvery transparent noodles.
The wait staff were very nice and they were very attentive to everyone and making sure that our plates weren’t empty for long. The ambiance was interesting because the music they played was like Old style Chinese Karaōke music and the place was nicely decorated. One suggestion for them is to get more of a variety of beer and sake. I didn’t drink that night because none of the sake or beer interested me. They need to get in some Sapporo, Asahi Black and some more different sake. ;)
i would like to end this review with a cool picture: D yes i set this up ;)
This reminds me of something my grandma used to say about me and my two buddies. She said we like the three shrimps, okay it sounds better in Chinese basically meaning that we were close friends and we got each others back.