All That Shabu — Restaurant in Alhambra

I used to enjoy this place very much when they first opened. Decided to come back here to celebrate my nephews birthday because our favorite place is closed for remodeling. To my dismay the quality of service and food has dramatically declined and they now value turning tables over customers. First, cuts of meat are much smaller and almost paper thin as opposed to how it used to be. The bar is well stocked with with small selection of veggies, seafood and side items but even the freshness, quality and flavor of that has dipped. Secondly, the sauce selection is something left to be desired. Mostly all their sauces are sour and tangy with sesame and peanut sauce being the exception. Maybe it’s just me on this one but I find other places having better selection of sauces that will pop your palette. Thirdly, SERVICE is almost non existent. We came for early dinner so it wasn’t too busy. Even then no one would come by and check to refill our meat orders until we’d literally have to flag someone down each time (more on this in the next section). Let’s keep in mind they split our party of 9 into 3 tables stating it would be faster to receive orders. No, we would order the limit of 3 meat choices per table. They would then disappear for a good 10 to 15 mins and then come out with the order for 1 table and disappear again. Come out again another 10min with order for 2nd table then leave again. Finally coming out another short time later with order for our last table. Keep in mind now total combined wait time for completion of our order is 30min and that’s just the first round of our order. Keep in mind no one in our party at any point during this time complained or gave them a reason to be rude. We were only concerned because they have a 90 min per table rule that they apparently strictly enforce. 90min and they already burned 30min having us wait for our meat in the first round. This does not include our next 2 rounds of meat. So, we’ve already burned time waiting for food and the clock is ticking. A server then comes by for the first time without having to be called for and informs us its last call and we said that’s cool. Now here’s where I thought we can just finish the remainder of our meal and go. I thought wrong. Now another server/manager comes by and says you guys have 13mins to finish up and go. Your time is up and the next party is waiting for the table. It’s at this point I finally speak my mind and say it’s not our fault the food took so long to come out and that they booked the table back to back reservations. He answers to me that that’s just the rules. My reply was that it is rude to tell us, when we’re finally settled, that we can’t finish up what’s left in our pots and we have to go once the 13 mins is up. We had no intention trying to score more food. We just wanted to finish what we just had and what we paid for to come here. I told him to leave us alone and let us finish our food and we will go without intention of stretching this out longer than it has to. This guy has the gall to go back to the front counter and stand there staring me down and shaking his head constantly. Losing my appetite at that point I figured I just go grab a coke a get ready to leave. Even more bold he decides to come walking by the soda fountain and staring at me as he walks by. I asked him if he was trying to provoke me or something? He literally walks up to my face in a manner that I felt invaded my space and would trigger me or anyone to get defensive. The nerve of this guy. So my brother comes over and tells the Manager this all isn’t worth it and he shouldn’t have tried to provoke anyone in this situation where the restaurant is trying to milk profit by trying to stretch the time for food delivery. In closing, none of us will ever come here again because of the food and the situation they put us in to begin with. Come if you like but your money will be better spent elsewhere I can guarantee that! Horrible dining experience for me and that’s an...

Business name: All That Shabu Business industry: Restaurant (hot pot buffet) Business hours: Monday-Friday 11:30am-9:30pm, Saturday & Sunday 11:30am-10:30pm

Overview: “All That Shabu” is an all you can eat (AYCE) hot pot restaurant located in Alhambra, CA and Irvine, CA. The restaurant serves Korean/Japanese fusion hotpot dish of thinly sliced meat and vegetables boiled in water which served with dipping sauces. Environment and space: This is a very spacious restaurant with low/dim yellow light setting. When you enter the restaurant, the ambience feels exactly like the American style buffet restaurant infrastructure. Tables and booths are on the sides, in the center, there are a large pool of food selections of varieties to choose from. Anything from vegetables, seafood, cooked food, noodles, and desert including soft serve ice-cream. Not to mention, they have a glorious sauce condiments table as well as free re-fill soft drinks machine. Dining experience: The overall dining experience is delightful. On Friday nights or weekends, it gets quite busy that you might have to wait for an hour or two just to get seated. Since this is a hot pot buffet, there is no to-go option. Dining starts by choose your own soup base/broth for your hot pot. Each individual gets their own pot of broth. They have five broths to choose from which includes original house, miso, vegetarian, beef bone, and spicy beef. The original house and the beef bone are the most popular ones. Afterwards, you may order three types of meat per round. These meats will be brought to you by the waiter, they are not on the buffet table. The servers are very attentive and would immediately ask if you want another round of meat. All the meats are freshly cut, and they are very thin. There are seven types of meat such as USDA Prime beef Brisket, Wagyu style Beef Short Plate, USDA Prime Flat Iron Steak, USDA Prime Chuck Eye Steak, Pork belly, Pork collar butt, and Chicken Breast. You may order on the lunch menu (11:30am-3pm, weekdays), and you may order the seven types of meat plus four more meat which are Filet Mignon, Beef Ribeye, Beef Chuck Flap and Lamb shoulder if you order from the dinner and weekend menu (3pm-closing, weekends). There are two sauce tables which consist of Ponzu sauce, Wasabi Ponzu sauce, Peanut sauce, Sesame sauce, Rooty Mustard sauce, Perilla with cilantro sauce, and Pine chili sauce. The help yourself buffet table has varieties of vegetables, seafood (crab, fish balls, clams, small octopus, fish, etc.), noodles (spinach noodles, udon, and ramen), hot food (fried rice cakes, fried noodles, fried chicken). Soft serve ice-cream and soft drink fountain have unlimited free refills. They also serve beer and Soju for additional prices. Pricing: There are two pricing from the lunch and dinner menu. Weekday lunch (11:30am-3pm) are $23.99 per adult, $12.99 for children age of (5-8), and $14.99 for children age of (9-10). For dinner (3pm-closing) as well as weekend and holidays, $29.99 per adult, $14.99 for children age of (5-8), and $17.99 for children age of (9-10). For dinner and weekend menu, you are open to 4 more types of meat to choose from which includes Filet Mignon, Beef Ribeye, Beef Chuck Flap and Lamb shoulder. Pricing could seem a little expensive; however, with the amount of food and varieties to choose from some might just think that it is worth it. Overall: Overall, this is a restaurant that you and your friends will enjoy dining in. Food varieties is the most important aspect when it comes to buffet. As well as the glorious sauce condiments table, free re-fill soft drinks and ice-cream machine definitely added...

All That Shabu is a welcome addition to the plethora of AYCE hot pot restaurants in the SGV area. While some restaurants have good quality meat but a poor selection in the salad bar (or vice versa), I would say that All That Shabu manages to put out good quality meat along with a fairly decent selection in both salad bar and cooked food options. This location recently opened up in the Sprouts and Burlington plaza and they're already pretty busy on weekends.

I've been here twice for dinner - both times during a weekday and they get busy quickly around 6-8 PM. Prices are $23.99 during weekday lunch, $29.99 during weeday dinner, weekends, and holidays. For $6 more, you get the option to choose from the dinner/weekend meat selections, which I think is pretty worth it. There's the usual brisket, pork belly, flat iron steak, but their special meats include filet mignon, ribeye, lamb, and chuck flap. And the meat that they serve is cut pretty thinly, with each plate looking fresh every time.

Everybody gets their own hot pot where you choose the selection of soup (original, miso, vegetarian, beef bone, or spicy beef) before you get the opportunity to tackle the hot appetizers and salad bar. They have the usual chicken, kimchi, sesame balls, japchae, fried rice while the salad bar has a variety of vegetables (spinach, bok choy, kale, squash, bean sprouts, corn, mushroom), seafood items (clams, crawfish, shrimp, octopus, scallop, mussels) and noodle selections (udon, spinach noodles, instant ramen, potato ramen, glass noodles). They's also a variety of fish balls, various fish balls, fish tofu, fried tofu, lotus root, etc. So overall, a good selection of items to fill in your hot pot.

There's unlimited soda or unsweetened green/black tea as well as a soft-serve ice cream machine. And of course, the sauce bar. Because this is more of a Korean AYCE hot pot, they don't offer satay, which was a little disappointing when I brought my parents. But they do have ponzu, sesame, wasabi ponzu, peanut and garnishes including garlic, cilantro, radish to whip up your sauce creations.

So yeah, there's probably something for everybody! When I went to eat with my co-workers, we ordered plates of meat continuously so I didn't really know which ones I was eating except that it all tasted really good. Meats were soft and tender, some a bit more fatty than others. And I do think I enjoyed the ones in the weekend/dinner selections more than the regular menu.

I will say that the broth isn't anything special. For $30, if you maximize on the meats and eat a good amount of vegetables, seafood - it will likely seem worth it at the end of the meal. Workers were pretty helpful even when the restaurant was super busy.

Right now because of Covid, they're asking that customers use the provided gloves when gathering ingredients. They also ask that you eat for a maximum of 2 hours, but I didn't really see anybody sit there for too long. They have a last call thirty minutes before closing where they close everything done (even the soda machine), so definitely get your fill of whatever you want before they take it all away.

tl;dr - Definitely left feeling super full but happy with the AYCE hot...