Shabuhouse

Shabuhouse was the next on the agenda! L., H., and I were reminiscing about hot pot one day at work. It evoked very fond memories for all of us of chilly winter days, seated around a bubbling pot of soup on a gas burner as we took it in turns to dump in delicious mushrooms, meats, fish balls, quail eggs and assorted veggies into a flavoursome soup. So we decided to head to a commercial hot pot place sometime in the future. H., was missing the equipment to do so, L., and D., have a tiny two bedroom house where we couldn't fit and my mother doesn't like the idea of hot pot with anyone besides family due to the chance of getting sick.

We ummed and ahhed for a bit, Sunnybank was our first go to area, since the only hotpot restaurants L., and I could think of were there. One of our friend's S., another Korean girl got invited along, she told us of a magical place in the city, a place where a person could eat a buffet for $20, of all the hot pot ingredients, four different soups, fantastic iced teas and all the sushi they could stand. It sounded amazing, and so close for the majority of us! In the end, she persuaded us to go to Shabuhouse and didn't actually turn up at all.

Aha! Shabuhouse!

So L., H., Boyfriend and I went to Shabuhouse, an unassuming little buffet place upstairs from a sports masseur, and right across from another Korean buffet. D., came along too, an hour late as usual.

Lunch special? Music to my ears

The interior was interesting! At least it was to me. There was a small entrance area, that lead to the paying area, some live seafood and then opened up to large seating arrangements. Each of the tables contained between 4-8 seats with an induction plate included for the hot pot.

The entrance! L., and H., were walking ahead

Is that one on the upper right really a baby though?

All the tables looked like this!

This was the sushi table, where chefs were quickly putting out plate after massive plate of sushi. There was also a very large well stocked bar behind them

Go chefs go!

This picture doesn't show it too well but all along the wall are identical bottles filled with different shades of a coloured liquid. If you were there, the colour of the liquid in the glasses shaded from yellow to green, and on the wall opposite us shaded from green to blue to purple! I thought it was quite cool.

Really pretty in person, the lights make this look terrible

I didn't take a photo but there were also some huge plasma screens all around us playing random songs. How random were the songs? Well it was like someone had just plugged in their iPod into the speaker system, one of the songs that came on was Skrillex's Bangarang. If this is a good or a bad thing, depends on your taste I suppose! The videos were just as good, with none of the actual music videos playing, most of the time there were random clips of sea life or animal documentary shorts.

We sat there awkwardly for a bit before flagging down a waitress to explain what we had to do. Apparently the entire restaurant is on buffet at lunch, help yourself to whatever, don't leave food or you get fined $20, order drinks with any of the staff, or flag them down if you need anything, simple! We poured over the local drink menus. I read a review somewhere that they had excellent house iced teas! I can't believe I didn't take a photo of the warning sign either!

The iced tea menu!

We ended up getting a fruit goshana for 2, a cold yuja tea and a hot gen mai cha sencha tea. L., H., and I couldn't decide at all, I wanted all the teas!

The fruit goshana was a sweet fruity tea, it had lots of floating fresh fruit but I wasn't too impressed with the strawberries they had included. It was strawberry season and we had a massive glut of really good quality strawberries, so why did theirs taste like ass? I really liked the combo of fruit, but its not like they contribute much to the flavour anyway, it does look absolutely fantastic though.

Mmm tasty fruit goshana

The Yuja tea was sweet too, and it reminded me of a slightly bitter green tea mixed with lemonade? I really liked it though, very tart and refreshing with its combination of flavours.

H.'s Yuja!

So it was now time to head to the buffet tables and see what was on offer! On the far shadowy left hand side, there was a hot food buffet, pre cooked not cooked to order. From left to right there was Korean fried chicken, deep fried sushi with a tangy dipping sauce and a vegetarian stir fry. We didn't pick up any fried chicken, the deep fried sushi was the best out of all the fried foods actually, it had a spicy beef interior and I really liked the tempura batter as well as whatever the sauce was. The vegetarian stir fry I ignored I think, there was a big batch of it left over, H., grabbed us a plate of everything. It looks interesting though, several different types of capsicum, onions, eggplant, and who knows what those chewy looking bits are.

Fried chicken, fried sushi and a fried . . .stirfry?

Vegetarian spring rolls, deep fried tofu in a sweet, sticky sauce and vegetarian noodles. I don't really remember any of these beyond basic thoughts. The spring rolls were very light on filling and they were small to start off with. I never like tofu, although these weren't too bad, crunchy outsides and soft tofu innards, obviously a hit with how many were missing. The noodles, H., grabbed were ignored by the entire group.

Spring rolls, deep fried tofu and noodles

For our actual hot pot soups, there were two large hot water dispensers and a stack of bowls containing the soups. The two water dispensers contained a clear Japanese dry fish soup and a vegetarian broth while the bowls held a hot and spicy, tom yum soup. I don't think anyone opted for the tom yum soup, H., and I went for the fish broth, my Boyfriend and L., got the vegetarian. I have the feeling that L., might have gotten D., a tom yum broth though. There were large metal bowls that fit into the induction plates built into our tables, we were really surprised that the broth from the hot water dispensers came out so hot though! The bowl heated up really quickly and I found myself quickly running back to our table to get rid of my bowl. The broths were very thin, barely any flavour to them until you boiled them down. It was a very faint, heavily diluted broth.

Japanese Dry Fish Soup it says in the background

Hot and spicy soup!

Next on the agenda was the assorted foods for the hot pot itself. There were two main spots to get things for your hot pot. Looking back at the photos I can't really see how they were arranged, besides for colour? There were tongs and large rectangular plates everywhere to help yourself to whatever you wanted.There were spring onions, pumpkin, soft tofu and seafood extenders/ fake crab on this bench.

Spring onions, onions, pumpkins, soft tofu and seafood extenders
You can see the soup dispensers in the background

This one was part of the central assortment. From left to right going clockwise, an orange and white fish ball, zucchini, baby pak choy, bean sprouts and some really bad fish tofu. The fish balls were a lot firmer than what I'm used to really, they weren't really good. I felt like this was odd, cause I've always bought/been served really good fish balls and tofu. You can get a really good kilo of it for less than 10 dollars, so I wonder how much these guys bought theirs for.

Fishball, fishball, zucchini, pak choy, bean sprouts and fish tofu

Then there were the frozen meat section, prawns, beef, pork and octopus going from upper left clockwise. I didn't pick any of this, it didn't look particularly appetising and I'm not a fan of any of those things in my hot pot. I think I left out some cabbage and napa cabbage from the photo.

Prawns, beef, pork and octopus

To the left of the sushi benches, there were raw noodles in steel containers, udon, ramen, a weird wheat flour noodle, vermicelli and egg noodles. I picked up some egg noodles and my Boyfriend picked the udon.

Udon, ramen, weird wheat noodles, vermicelli and egg noodles

Here are the neat sauce containers! Very large and light containers that had three spots for the different sauces, from left to right a sesame sauce, gochujang sauce and soy sauce. Their sesame sauce was super tasty, I can't describe it besides that distinctive sesame oil scent and a creamy texture, but its very worth trying!

Man these containers are cool.
Sesame, gochujang and soy sauce

This is the sushi I picked up! I picked up two of every available piece and its honestly been so long I can't remember what was what and what tastes good.The beef one at the top above the omelette covered sushi was very good. I remember that at least hahaha.

What are you all?

This fruit salad featured in the right of the picture was the only dessert at the restaurant I think. It had banana, apple and kiwi fruit in a yoghurt sauce. It was actually a very good mix.



This is our amazing spread! H., put the fried foods in the middle for us all to share and from upper left corner clockwise is L.'s, H.', my food and then my Boyfriend's food. We spent a lot of time talking and eating, my Boyfriend and I finished our sushi and I made the mistake of not cooking my noodles in the soup so they tasted like glue.

We finished most things but it was a struggle even with the $20 fine lurking at the back of our minds. H., tried to hide her leftover noodles in the clear broth. L., and I made our boyfriends eat our leftovers hahaha.

Atmosphere: 7, pleasant but a bit odd. I quite liked it, its not a good place for a lazy lunch when you want to pig out with friends
Service: 3, took a while for a waitress to notice us. Other than that nothing since everything is buffet style. I found it annoying there was no signs for how to operate the induction plates, its lucky we're so intuitive as a group
Food: 4, edible but not fantastic. Its a massive let down to me that the hotpot which is the main draw of the restaurant was so poor. The stock was terrible and it took a long time for it to boil down to a drinkable state.