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“Shaburi”
Occasion: | Cuisine: | Area: | Cost: | Rating: |
Night Out | Asian | Midtown | Break the Bank | Good |
I had a chance to sample Shaburi, the new shabu shabu and sukiyaki spot in Murray Hill, last week, and rather than give a full on review, I have created a list of helpful hints based on my experience there that should help you out in case you decide to go.
First, a bit of vocabulary. Shabu Shabu is an old world Japanese method of open fire cooking where meat, fish, tofu, vegetables, and glass noodles are swished back and forth in a hot pot of broth. Sukiyaki is a similar hearth-styled cooking technique, but with sukiyaki, the ingredients, marinated in sugar and soy, are cooked on a cast-iron saute pan. At Shaburi, all the cooking is done by the diner, at tables with electric plates, like your own personal Benny Hanna.
Now, without further adieu, here are your Shaburi Dining Tips:
(1) DRESS IN LAYERS, preferably with a tank top under it all, because when that dining room gets filled up with pots of broth at a rapid boil, the place gets hot and humid—sort of like a mirin-dashi steamroom. The smell is not unpleasant; it is just like hanging out in a rainforest of seaweed. I was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt topped with a short-sleeved one, and popped down to the bathroom to partially disrobe because of the hot moist air. Feel free to play your own round of strip Shabu Shabu.
(2) DO NOT SHOW UP HUNGRY: Eat just before you get there. That way, if (and when) you are forced to wait several hours to get your food while drinking sake the entire time, you wont be too trashed and too cranky to cook your shabu shabu and sukiyaki when they arrive. Since the food is RAW by the way, I have no idea why it would take two hours to pull together a platter of high end mixed meat crudite. Now, I realize the place just opened, and so delays are understandable, but considering they own 8 of these in China, you’d think they have this formula down by now. Apparently not. Look, it’s early on, so I am sure this will improve (and hope it will improve), but when you wait two hours for (uncooked) food, you gotta wonder. So, the moral of the story is, DO NOT SHOW UP HUNGRY.
(3) DISHES TO AVOID: The Tofu Salad ($8). How shall I put this? Well, how ‘bout this way: If it looks like cold cream, tastes like cold cream, and has the texture of cold cream, well, it’s basically cold cream, but in this instance in the shape a rectangular cube on a bed of Chinese parsley. It was completely flavor-free, which is not a qualit ... [more, click below]
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