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| - As someone who has over 50+ check-ins to Shabu Shabu Paradise, you can probably tell how I feel about Shabu Shabu in general. If you guessed that I like it, ding ding ding! You're the big winner of the day! When I saw Shabu Grill was taking over what was formerly Match, I was pretty excited as it's closer to my house than Paradise. I did, however, have my doubts that it could be as good as either Paradise or Swish on Spring Mountain which I also frequent. Spoiler alert: I was right.
I must note that Grill has a much more extensive menu than either Paradise or Swish offers, and I only tried their Shabu Shabu offering. Many of these sounded tasty and warrant further exploration in the future. The concept behind how their Shabu works is much different than any other place I've been to. You get to choose two broths up front, and then you go to some stocked refrigerators and choose the veggies and meat you want to dip into the broth and pay as you go. I do think this could ultimately be a winning idea as it provides a lot more flexibility with the experience than any other place that I know of can offer. Here are the downsides:
1. Quality of the meat - I personally wasn't too impressed with the meat when comparing it to particularly Paradise. The pork just had an off-putting flavor to me and I'd never buy another plate of it again. Conversely I think Paradise has amazing Kurobuta pork. The beef was okay, but I do prefer both Swish and Paradise's version
2. The rice - WASN'T STICKY RICE. I don't know, I just thought this was some sort of crime against humanity. I know nothing about traditions when it comes to sticky vs non-sticky rice, but it simply didn't feel right to me
3. Lack of sauces - Grill did offer a decent selection of spicy and sweet mixing sauces at the table that I liked, but did not offer any dipping sauces for the meat and veggies being taken out of the broth. I read another review mention to ask for a peanut sauce, so perhaps they do have them, but even if they do, I find it weird it wasnt offered to us standard. This led to not only a downgrade in flavor, but I like using the dipping sauces to also cool down the extremely hot food coming out of the broth.
4. No alcohol - This is a work in progress and I can't really fault them for the delay, but I do love a nice glass of wine or sake with my shabu, so it led to a lessened experience even if it's not their fault.
Positives are the different broths (though I preferred the regular to the lemongrass), the variety of options available, great service, and the price was a very good value (much cheaper than my average visit to Paradise).
Overall it was a decent shabu experience, and if Paradise or Swish didn't exist for me to compare it to, I'm sure I would have been more impressed. And if the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays didnt exist the Blue Jays might have a chance. 3 stars!
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