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Last month, I was bitching about how ultra-trendy fast food restaurant Pepper Lunch failed to live up to the hype of “cooking your own food.” It’s a shame, because that was pretty much the most interesting thing about the place; otherwise, it’s basically your standard, run-off-the-mill steakhouse where food is served twice as fast and costs thrice as much.

If what you want in a restaurant is the novelty of cooking your own food to suit your tastes, then I highly suggest that you make a trip to Healthy Shabu Shabu.

No, Healthy Shabu-Shabu isn’t a commercial meth lab. Rather, it’s a low-key restaurant that serves a Japanese-style hot pot dish where meat, seafood, and vegetable is cooked in a chicken or mushroom stock. It’s called “shabu shabu” not because it contains illegal substances, but because that is apparently the sound meat makes when it’s swishing around a pot of boiling soup.

You’d think that shabu-shabu is as simple as dumping all the ingredients into the pot and waiting five minutes for it to cook. But apparently, shabu-shabu is a little bit more complicated than that – but not too complicated for those who don’t know their way around a kitchen.

The first step in eating shabu shabu is to choose which shabu shabu platter you’d like. There are meat options (beef tenderloin, Angus beef, lamb, and chicken to name a few), seafood options, or vegetables.

Mixed Seafood Platter

Beef Tenderloin

The next step is to boil the soup base. Healthy Shabu-Shabu has a small electric stove in front of each diner that you can control using a remote console instead of the usual LPG knobs (which I’m afraid to use). It’s really easy for you to set the temperature and lower it once the soup starts boiling.

Once the soup is boiling, put the ingredients one by one, starting with the ones that will take longer to cook (sweet corn and yam). Softer ingredients like the meatballs and vegetables can come next, but make sure they’re not in the pot longer than 30 seconds.

Finally, add your meat or seafood. If you’ve got a seafood platter, place the shrimp, crab and lobster first to add flavor to the soup. Then add the fish, but do not leave that in the pot for more than ten minutes.

Meat-eaters are given an egg and a small dish. Crack the egg open and soak the meat into the egg yolk before placing it in the pot. Since the meat is sliced really thinly, do not leave it in for more than twenty seconds if you want it to stay juicy and tender! I suggest you leave one or two pieces of meat inside the soup to add flavor.

The trick to enjoying shabu-shabu is to eat each ingredient one by one – but dip them in the special sauce that comes with the shabu shabu platter before you do that! Mix the garlic, onion, and chili (if you want it spicy) into the sauce base. To add more texture to the sauce, you can also mix in an egg yolk.

Bloggers loved the shabu-shabu

And if you’re the hard-headed type who likes to do things your own way, you can just forget about the “proper” way to make a shabu-shabu hotpot and add the ingredients in any order!

Dessert was a delicious bowl of fruit served in crushed ice, milk, and honey.

Healthy Shabu-Shabu can be found at Power Plant Mall, The Podium, Robinson’s Galleria, Shangri La Plaza Mall, SM North The Block, Alabang Town Center, and Robinsons Midtown. You may contact them at 627-3721 or 672-3290

Tags: mongolian, shabu-shabu