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Review content:
My girlfriend and I love to eat at this restaurant. We always tend to get Shabu Shabu when we dine here, but they also serve yakiniku (food you cook yourself on a grill), sukiyaki, and other things. For those of you who don’t know what Shabu Shabu is, it is a Japanese style of cooking where you cook your raw meat and vegetables in a boiling pot of water.
Once you are seated you are presented with a steaming towel with which you can cleanse your hands and/or face. There are two types of beef that you can choose from but I don’t remember the exact prices or names of them. There is one that I believe which is $18 and the other is around $15. Each “meal” comes with a garden salad topped with ginger dressing, a dish with thinly sliced meat, vegetables (cabbage, carrot, tofu, watercress, scallions, and mushrooms), and two types of flat thin noodles (glass and another one which I’m not sure of).
You begin by swirling your meat in the steaming pot and then dipping them in one of two sauces, one is a sesame-based sauce and the other is a Ponzu sauce. My preference is the Ponzu sauce. There is also soy sauce, sesame oil, and kochujang (a Korean red pepper paste) on the side that you can use with your food.
Once you have finished cooking all of your beef and vegetables, the waiter/waitress brings you a cup with a salt and pepper mix for you to put the broth that was made from the steaming water, beef, and vegetables. You can then drink the broth and eat the noodles. After you are done with the broth and noodles, you will be given a choice of five ice creams (Chocolate, Ginger, Green Tea, Red Bean, and Vanilla), if I remember correctly. My girlfriend and I usually have the green tea or red bean.
Some optional side orders that you can order with your meal are kimchee, a na mool sampler, kimchee gyoza, bi bim bap, and wontons. Our favorite is their wontons, a nice addition to an already great meal.
Beverages range from beer to shochu. I tend to favor the Soba Buckwheat beer that they sell here. They also sell draft beer in three sizes ranging from a 12oz. mug to a 64oz. pitcher.
For the $18/person this meal costs you, we think that it’s a great deal.
Due to the layout of the restaurant because of the stoves built into the tables, there are only 10 tables upstairs and 3 tables downstairs so the wait for a table can be long sometimes.
This review is for the location on East 10th Street but Shabu Tatsu has a few locations in the city, some of which I believe are on the Upper East Side.
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