Our tour of the major Japanese food genres arrived at a new stop at our last dinner in Tokyo: shabu shabu. I have to confess this is not my favourite genre of Japanese food but the missus loves it. As it happens, after this meal, the boys are big fans too. We ate shabu shabu at Shabusen in Ginza; they also have a branch in Yokohama. In Ginza they are now located on the 8th floor of the Exit Melsa building. They don’t take reservations but they’re open from 3 pm onwards for dinner on weekends and so we hoped that we wouldn’t have to wait too long around 7 pm. As it happened, we didn’t have to wait at all. It’s a large restaurant with two separate dining rooms and they had four seats together open in the smaller one. We sat down and got down to business. Here’s how it went.

In both dining rooms customers are seated at counters that wrap around a central service area. Each diner has their own hotpot in which to cook their thinly-sliced meat and veg. On the one hand, this makes it easy for everyone to get what they want but, on the other, does make it hard for more than a couple of people to eat together in a convivial manner. The menu presents both a la carte options and a number of shabu shabu sets (you can also order sukiyaki sets). As far as I could make out, everyone in our dining room was eating a shabu shabu set of one kind or the other. That’s what all four of us did. You can get either single meat sets or two meat combo sets. Either way, you will also get a big bowl of veg to put in the hotpot and your choice of appetizer, starch and dessert.

We went with the two meat combos. I got the basic A combo with regular Japanese beef and Japanese pork. The missus and the younger boy got the B combo with regular Japanese beef and A3 wagyu. The older boy, who is showing disturbing signs of high roller behaviour, asked if he could get the C combo with Japanese pork and A5 wagyu and got the nod. We each got a different appetizer and each of us was very happy with their selection. I thought my steamed aspara tofu with crab was excellent; other members of the family enjoyed their tomato salad, braised sweet pork and simmered komatsuma greens with clams respectively.

And then the meat and veg for the hotpot arrived and we got stuck in. If you’ve not eaten shabu shabu before, it’s pretty simple. You swish the thinly sliced meat in the boiling water with your chopsticks for a few seconds, swirl it in the sauce of your choice and eat it by itself or with some green onions. It’s a good idea to dump the veg and tofu and noodles into the pot at some point as well. With the set courses at Shabusen you also receive your choice of steamed rice, rice porridge or cooked wheat noodles to eat your meat with. At the end some of the seasoned broth you’ve created over the course of the meal is presented to you as a closing soup. It’s a bit hectic—and, as the boys discovered, till you get the knack of it, it’s easy to drop your meat in the hotpot and then you have to fish for it in a panic—but it’s fun enough; though, as I said, I am too much of a heathen to appreciate it fully in gastronomic terms.

Choice of dessert to end. The missus and the older boy got variations of ice cream with sweetened red beans. The younger boy and I got the mango and yogurt pudding, which was rather good.

For a look at the meal and everything we ate and drank, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

Because it involves beef, and especially because three of us got wagyu in their sets, it was not a cheap meal. All of the above plus a beer and a couple of Cokes came to 26,125 yen or just about $176. As with all our meals in Japan, this was very reasonable by American standards, but unless you love shabu shabu, you might join me in thinking it not the best value on its own terms compared to most of the other meals we ate.

Alright, just one more meal report from Tokyo to go. That’ll go up on Friday. But before that I’ll have my first Twin Cities report in two months. That will go up tomorrow and will cover our lunch in St. Paul this past Sunday.