[Santa Ana] [Japanese] Shabu Shabu Bar
Shabu Shabu Bar
1945 E 17th St #108
Santa Ana, CA 92705
(714) 954-0332
It was a casual weekday. I turned on my computer in the morning, and saw some Shabu Shabu Bar’s pictures on wintervalley’s Facebook page. I thought “hmmmm look good.” Then I checked my Plurk, and saw more pictures posted by wintervalley. I thought “hmmmm I kinda want shabu shabu now.” After that I saw wintervalley’s blog post, then I thought “I GOTTA HAVE SHABU SHABU TONIGHT!”
After Dr. P got off work, we followed his navigation lady’s commands, and drove around the streets near Shabu Shabu Bar in circles for 30 minutes before finally finding the restaurant. That lady is going crazy and almost drove me crazy!
Shabu Shabu Bar looks modern and pretty (so are their waitresses haha). There’s a cute little waiting area/bar by the door. Their sake collections are displayed on one side of the wall.
Shabu Shabu Bar’s hot pot is different from the other places’. It has a “chimney” in the middle. I wonder what is the use of the “chimney”? Also there’s no kombu seaweed in the soup base, just water.
Roasted sesame for the goma sauce. We grind the seeds, and our waiter added goma sauce to it. The ground sesame smelt so good.
Goma Sauce / Ponzu Sauce
In my opinion, besides fresh ingredients, what make shabu shabu good or not are the dipping sauces. I LOVE Shabu Shabu Bar’s sauces. Comparing to California Shabu Shabu (our other favorite shabu shabu restaurant), their goma sauce is sweeter and not as thick. It tasted different, but also good. Their ponzu sauce was so good that I think I can just drink it. Our server told us he made it himself! I want to be his friend. We added a drop of their special “hot drop” into the dipping sauces. It was AMAZING! Soooooooo good!
Sapporo ($6.00)
We were so happy with the dipping sauces, we had to order beer to celebrate! haha….
Vegetable Plate
They gave you a lot of vegetables here. There were Chinese cabbage, green leaf veggies, tofu, seaweed, corn, mushroom, carrot, konjac noodle and udon noodle. Everything was really fresh, clean, and good quality. I saw a lot of men left most of their vegetable plate untouched, and I saw the waitstaff throwing those beautiful vegetables into the trash can. What a waste! People really should eat more vegetables!
I always like to cook all of my veggies first, then cook meat piece by piece, and eat it with veggies.
Brown Rice ($1.00)
Normally brown rice cost extra $1, but they were out of white rice so we got brown rice for free. Nice!
Prime Beef (Large) ($22.99)
Prime Beef is tender and displays wonderful marbling, and is among the highest of the U.S.D.A. grade meats. Our Prime Beef will simply melt in your mouth. Roughly only 2% of American beef is categorized as Prime Beef.
Dr. P ordered a large Prime Beef. The beef looked beautiful, but Dr. P noticed that there were some little brown spots at the edge of the meat. He asked our waiter about it, and the waiter asked the owner to come take a look. The owner apologized and said they shouldn’t send out a plate like that. They quickly gave Dr. P another plate of meat without any brown spots. Dr. P was very happy with his prime beef.
Kurobuta “Berkshire” Pork (Large) ($17.99)
Kurobuta “Berkshire” Pork is the Wagyu Beef of pork by far. It is renown for it’s superb meat marbling and will just simply melt in your mouth.
I ordered Kurobuta “Berkshire” Pork. While Dr. P was waiting for his beef, he tried some pork. He took a bite and went “Mmmmmm wow!” He said he has never had pork that good. Their pork was truly delicious! The marbling of the meat was beautiful. It tasted so tender. Personally I like it more than beef.
Toward the end of the meal, our server brought us some soup base for the udon noodle soup. He also offered to make it for us, but we like cooking it ourselves.
Udon Noodle Soup
A bowl of goodies. We like their soup base a lot. But I LOVE the ponzu sauce too much so I have to dip udon noodle in the ponzu too. haha…. I don’t even like carrot. But I ate the carrot because it was in cute flower shape.
Mochi Ice Cream (Mango & Green Tea) ($3.00)
After the meal, we were about to pop. Our server said to us, “I hope you guys have room for dessert because it’s my treat!” I kinda want to ask why, but then I just said “oh that’s so nice of you. Thank you.” We thought maybe they want to make up for the beef incident. We picked green tea and mango mochi ice cream. Both were yummy.
We had a coupon from Yelp for buy 1 get 1 50% off (with 20% gratuity added). But looking at the bill, they gave us a $25 discount? They gave Dr. P his order for free. They didn’t have to do that because they did resolve the problem right away, and we were very happy with the beef. But that also showed how good their service is. The owner came and apologized one more time in the middle of the meal. Our server was very polite and friendly. A really pretty waitress was also chatty and friendly. Good food + good service = good restaurant.
We saw a big group of people (maybe 12 or 14?) having a shabu shabu party. I like how everyone was sitting at the round shabu shabu bar and can talk /drink with each other. Maybe I’ll have a shabu shabu party with friends here someday? ^^
February 7th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
that first bite of the pork w/ the ponzu was ridiculously good! I love this place.
February 7th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
i love this place!
February 7th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Glad you liked it!!
According to their website, they use Pi Water (Closest thing to your own body’s water)for the soup base. I think it’s supposed to do your body good? hehehe
February 7th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
What a good deal after the discounts
. Service is totally great!
I find it funny that I just read two blog posts involving smashing sesame seeds for a sauce.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:43 am
I told Wen that my friend just told me how good this place is and then you posted it right away too!
I guess this place must be great and I gotta try it myself soon ^_^.
your pics look so good, amazing!
K.J