Hot Pot Shabu Shabu

I didn’t know what to expect from this place but just wanted to give it a try.
I had the mushroom soup, which was recommended by the employee. I really enjoyed the soup but wished they had more to offer on the dishes to put into the pot. I noticed that everything offered was either something they were able to just chop up (vegetable) or pre-​made (shrimp or lobster ball from chinatown). They didn’t have anything special or unique to their restaurant to offer. The sauces weren’t even anything special — just something they poured out from a canister and put into their own bottles.
I don’t think I’ll return to this place again.

You wanna talk about a nightmare in a pot? My nephew complained that there was a roach at the bottom of the hot pot. His waitress said, «What, you want me call 911?»
Taken aback, he gave her the benefit of the doubt thinking perhaps she didn’t understand the language since she had ignored his party of 4 the entire time they were there.
Asking a manager to view his soup, the «boss» wiped the bug away with his fingernail and said, «Itssa ant, not cockroach.»
When my 6′ 3″, 230 lb. nephew got up to leave, they threatened to call the cops for non payment. My nephew said, «Go ahead.»
Then came the ultimate response from this insane crew, «OK, WE GIVE YOU NOTHER BOWL!»

Like others, I had a bad experience here. A little pricey (anything within the radius of a Walmart needs to discount their food. Star from the center of Walmrt, and you get a \20% discount, then drop the discount 5% for every 300 feet — at 1200 feet (4 football fields), you’re free to charge normal prices) you’ll never enjoy your food at normal prices if you’re thinking about rollbacks the whole time (which it’s impossible not to do if you see the Walmart sign out the window)). But mostly I was just put off by the waitress charging me for a 2^nd broth when mine ran out. I can’t help it if they use camp-​out cooking devices (unsaef by the way) cranked up to 10 and it burns my broth down before I’m done eating… Not a big believer that borth influences the taste of shabu shabu much anyways. once you dip it in soy sauce are you really tasting the precious broth everyone goes on and on about?! (Broth hater.) The food was OK and they were open super late, which I like, but it’s clear from the reviews here that the business is going to suffer if they don’t get better attitudes, policies and cooking devices,

I don’t know why but it sounds like the local hates this place so much.
I loved this place! Their customer service was awesome when we were there. I thought the broth was excellent! Just the right taste for me and my boo. My boo is a picky eater and he loved this place.
I wish they have more of this place in the Bay Area. I’ve never been to a hotpot place where you get to select whatever you want in the fridge. They charge each plate differently depending on if it was vegy, meat, seafood. Different prices so just look at the menu and choose whatever you like in your soup. I would definately stop by the next time I’m in HI.
The ambiance wasn’t great but seems like any old typical asian restaurant to me.
I left this place soooooo satisfy with the food since I don’t care about the ambiance anyway. xD

My family and I tried this restaurant tonight. It is a new restaurant that is combined with a Vietnamese /​Thai Restaurant (Thai Green Papaya). We were super excited to try out the restaurant, but walked away horribly dissapointed.
The wait staff were very very rude. We wanted two separate burners at our table, and had to ask for it about 7+ times. The wait staff kept on trying to push us to have one burner with a split pot (pot with two separate spaces). I finally had to threaten that we were going to leave the restaurant if they didn’t give us two different burners (note: we were the ONLY customers in the entire restaurant — so we weren’t hogging anything).
This is the kind of place where you choose your soup broth for $ 4.95 and pay for each plate that you eat /​put into the broth (sea food, veggies, noodles, meats, etc).
The quality of food here is very low quality and very expensive. Example: A raw vegetable platter cost $ 3.00 and included several slices of won bok cabbage (napa cabbage) and several pieces of watercress.
The meats were low quality and were sliced very thick — it was rubbery and difficult to eat. We ended up throwing away more than one plate of meat because it was too difficult to eat. The seafood was pretty good, but didn’t make up for the fact that all dishes were very skimpy.
The restaurant offers you three types of sauces — none were any good. I think they were teriyaki, stinky tofu, and ponzu sauce. We got three little saucer sized dishes of sauce to share among all of us. Very unreasonable and skimpy.
Long story short — avoid this place at all costs. Food quality is bad; service with an attitude; and your money would be better spent anywhere else! It costed $ 60.00 for 3 people, and we were still hungry when we left.
Sorry — I tried to like this restaurant, but walked away very dissapointed.

This doesn’t rank very highly for me, parking is tough, service was *really* slow and the price seemed pretty expensive for what we got. At the end of the night I felt like I had a PHO hot pot experience. The Vietnamese aspects come through too strongly here and not for the better.
While other posters complained about the butane burner stoves… this is the same at Ichiriki and I don’t see a reason to complain about it. It’s done at many Shabu Shabu and Nabe places, so I’ll just disregard those reviews as doomsayers screaming that the sky is falling.
Sauces… broth… selection of dishes… all MEDIOCRE at best. The pork plate we had was way too fatty. What was shameful is they put really nice looking cuts on top and then under the first layer of meat were 8+ fatty pieces that we just ended up leaving.
With so many other options minutes away… save your time and money. We spent $ 50 without tip on the two of us with no drinks and without gorging ourselves. I’ll stick with Sweet Home, Ichiriki and even Shabu Shabu House.

I was planning to eat with my mom down the street, but when I saw the Hot Pot sign, I just HAD to try it. I’ve been looking for a Sweet Home Café alternative when it is either to crowded or closed.
The big sign outside advertised that the broth was $ 4.95, so I thought it was reasonably priced… until I started ordering and they told me that it was per person. Wha?! Guess we won’t be getting any refills. We didn’t even get a refill of water the whole time we were there. Since we had to pay anyway, we tried two different broths — the Thai and Beancurd, which the server said were the 2 most popular. The Thai broth was tasty and reminded me of Tom Yum soup. The Beancurd broth was not so good.
I went to the refrigerator to pick out our sides, but was instantly confused. First, there are no signs to indicate what the items are. I had to wait for the server to come by to ask her to tell me what each and every dish was. The pork vs. beef vs. tongue was not very obvious. Then there were a few I wouldn’t have known (blood, intestine, etc.). Secondly, once I knew what everything was, the pricing was confusing because the plate colors did not match the signs. It looked like it was color coded, but it didn’t match what was on the plates.
After we grabbed our sides, I looked around for where to grab my sauce but didn’t see anything. After the server brought our broth, he said «Oh, you don’t have your sauce… let me get it.» Whew, okay, I almost thought we’d have to go without sauce. But then… he brings us 2 sauces — one Thai and one Beancurd. He explains that the Thai goes with the Thai broth and the Beancurd goes with the Beancurd broth. Well, actually, he said Curdbean, but I’m assuming he meant beancurd. The really disappointing part is that the sauce actually tasted like a condensed version of the broth. We ended up not even using it.
Halfway through our meal, we decided we needed a little more sides. My mom went to the fridge and grabbed what she thought was sponge tofu. We put it in the broth, but when I tried one, it was extremely soggy and gross. I think it may have actually been bread?! They definitely need signs to explain what everything is.
My mom enjoyed her first hot pot experience and thought the Thai broth was really tasty, but I couldn’t help comparing to Sweet Home Café every step of the way. Unfortunately, this place just didn’t make the cut.

This place has an awesome location for perfect potential.
Too bad…
Well, first off the service sucked. We had to keep asking for water… We could barely get the attention of a server because the restaurant is kind of divided and our side was pretty much empty. It took awhile (a little over 15 minutes) for our broth to be brought to our table. The «original» broth tasted pretty much like it was straight out of the Campbell’s Chicken Broth can. The butane stoves were pretty sketchy. The veggies were good though, but can’t really go wrong with that. Fish tasted horrible.
After our meal, my friend broke out in strange hives and I had a sore stomach. Won’t be going back.

I came in, saw an empty dining room, and portable gas burners, and left. This is why:
You can’t own a hot pot establishment that puts your customers in danger. Buy the proper equipment, that costs $ 150-​$ 200 per machine, rather than $ 15 per machine, and you will not only see more people walking through the door, but I won’t leave and go down the street to a full Shabu House with the electric burners, hot sake, and cold beers.

OK first of all… upon seating, when the Butane Camping Stove before you says «For Outdoor Use Only» and it’s like a foot-​and-​a-​half in front of you… Indoors, it’s might be foretelling of the experience to come. (OK I don’t know why I wrote this, it’s true, but well… the experience… read on.)
I had high hopes for this place… my friend who suggested it raved about the place next door, Green Papaya which apparently owns this particular joint too… they were ninja and gave us menus for both places. When I opened my menu, I was like, wait isn’t this Hot Pot Shabu Shabu? I had the Green Papaya menu in hand. I was puzzled.
The service here was an «experience» — Thick accents, pushing, and somewhat rude. I wasn’t a big fan of our waitress trying to push three different types of soups on us… especially since it was MY first time there. (I’m sorry at $ 4.95 a soup– I think not). In the we just ended up with just two soup bases: The original (a chicken broth-​like soup barely any detection of flavor, period), and the Thai Spicy which was actually decent.
The portion sizes were small and quite pricey to what I’m accustomed to. I was under the impression that we would spend less than $ 10 per person and be satisfied, but nope… we ended up spending about ~$ 12 per person AND heading over to Sam’s Club for slices of pizza and hot dogs to fill the rest of the void left from the Hot Pot place.
My feeling is that this place really needs improvement… Until then… I don’t think I’ll be back here again.

I’m Vietnamese and yes, we do hot pot occasionally– but maybe the people from hot pot — shabu shabu should just stick with what they knew…
Location: right across the street to walmart and connected to their sister store, green papaya. Pretty great and convenient location if you ask me!
Service: I can mediocrely understand Vietnamese and it probably would have been easier for me to understand what the waitress was trying to get across if she just spoke to us in her native tongue! On top of that, she was snappy and kind of rude with our check. Boo. Not a good time for bad customer service! At least my water was always full… Barely 1 star for that…(and cleanliness)
Food: the other star goes to the spicy Thai broth– it reminded me of bun Bo hue, for my Viet brothers and sisters out there… A pretty delish broth. But the original shabu shabu was bland and yes, tasted like only chicken broth. Lame. The portions also seemed super expensive to me. $ 5 for a small plate of meat, $ 3 veggies, $ 2 noodles, $ 3 mushrooms, $ 4 broth… I could literally eat 2 plates each and I’m a pretty small person. Noodles and mushrooms were alright, meat seemed fresh but the veggies were a bit wilted. It was okay… But definitely not worth the price!
Overall: if it tells you ANYTHING — the group of us went to SAMs club after and each had a piece of pizza and/​or hot dog– and were more satisfied with that $ 2 purchase opposed to the $ 11 spent… Lesson for the day: listen to Unilocal and don’t waste your money

I want to cry for Hot Pot Shabu Shabu. And then look at the owner and say: «REALLY???»
Really? Do you really think this is shabu shabu? Ugh. It just pains me to even write this review.
So my experience was not great, as if you couldn’t tell. We went in there and were quickly seated on the Green Papaya side. Luckily, we were seated on the right side because the other room’s electricity went out. The lights continued to stay off the entire time we were there, and they had to re-​seat people in that room into our room. Embarrassing.
It was Sweet Home Café style, in the sense that you go up to the refrigerators and choose your dishes. It was NOT Sweet Home Café style, in the sense that they did not have a lot of choices, they had no signs to what that mysterious meat was, and they gave you your own watered-​down sauce rather than having a sauce bar. The selections in the refrigerator, not only looked old, but it didn’t taste that fresh as well.
The broth isn’t something even worth mentioning, tasted like can chicken broth. The sauce was so horrible, I just wanted to ask for shoyu or anything else. The only thing they got right was the rice and I made sure to stuff myself full of rice and at least get full. :(
Times like this one makes me not want to be adventurous and try the latest restaurant. Oh well, at least I could say I tried. And never, never, never again.

went here tonight to check out the hot pot. they just opened so they were advertising 10% off. i’m guessing since this is kind of new to them, they did not have their system down on how they would be running the hot pot thing. of course we all know that every place in town is now trying to copy off the success that home sweet café has done. well, this place did not come close. their hot pot is vietnamese style. the soups here are different. i had the vietnamese spicy soup, which i thought was tasty. it was the ingredients which you pick that i felt they lacked much of. they are trying the same system as «home sweet» which is a self serve for what you want and they charge according to plate color. well the fish cake, lobster ball etc here just all tasted the same some how. there was a small selection of egg noodles, and rice noodle. the beef cuts here were not so great. and they only had 2 dipping sauces to provide. they were trying their best here, but the service was just not quick enough. they just seemed maybe unorganized and not ready to serve hot pot at its best. worst part was that the bill with the discount came out to be more expensive than what we normally pay for hot pot. so to me, it was a little pricey here. all these new places coming out with this «hot pot» deal better step it up. just don’t copy, make it better at least if you want to be successful. if not, you’re just ruining the experience for everyone. hot pot hype days might be over, just like how they did it with the yogurt shop deal. the plus to that, at least there’s no more waiting in line for an hour and a half. lol

this is a new spot for shabu shabu. it’s owned by the same people who runs green papaya next door.
didn’t try the hot pot yet. we ordered the grilled sea bass on rice and curry ramen with chicken.
i loved the sea bass, but was not fond of the curry ramen.
they have a 10% off promotion until ⁶⁄₂₀.
will be back to try the hot pot next time