Shabuya — Restaurant in Concord

An affordable, yet delicious AYCE hot pot location in the Bay Area? Say no more! If this statement is enough to entice you to satisfying that hot pot craving of yours, then Shabuya should be the next stop on your list if you're ever in the East Bay Area. Located in Concord, Shabuya offers AYCE at an affordable price of $20.99 for lunch and $29.99 for dinner (which is about a solid $5-10 off the normal price I'm used to seeing of $35+ for AYCE). Don't let the price fool you, the food and quality of Shabuya can rival any other AYCE location I've been to.

I visited their Concord location on a Friday night for dinner, arriving around 6pm or so. They do have a waitlist that you can join either on Yelp or when you arrive at the restaurant (luckily they are located in a plaza so if you do join later you can still walk around the area while waiting for your turn). We got lucky, and they were just cleaning up a table as we stepped inside and they told us our wait would be about 5 minutes.

After being seated, we were greeted by our server Josi who was an absolute delight throughout the night that I just HAD to give her a shoutout here. Seriously, if Josi is your server you'll be in for a fantastic dining experience as she is not only attentive to her diners, but also an absolute sweetheart to be around.

We selected our soup options - miso for me and the house special for my partner (after debating between that one and the tonkatsu option, which Josi steered us towards the house option, thank you again!). We were then informed that we could order up to 2 appetizers per round and 4 plates of meat per round (of note each plate of meet had about 4 slices). Non-alcoholic drinks were refillable, and so I went with their lychee iced tea (which was another one of Josi's recommendations). Just a quick aside, I know the drinks aren't why you'd want to dine here but the lychee iced tea was to die for and I was absolutely delighted that I could get refills on it and enjoyed the drink to my heart's content.

For our first round we got their gyoza, soy glazed chicken karage, prime flat iron steak, beef toro, premium rib eye, and prime blade meat. Service was fairly speedy and we were dining on our meat in no time. Other hot pot accompaniments and sauces are self-serve at the salad-bar type of set up in the center of the restaurant. I will say there isn't a whole lot of options, but they do have your standard noodles, vegetables, fish cake, and seafood selections available (which in my opinion is plenty give the price point of this AYCE hot pot place). With all of our food in front of us we dug in and enjoyed our meal to the fullest - the meat was of good quality overall and the entire meal experience was very enjoyable.

If you need a go-to AYCE hot pot location in the East Bay, then Shabuya may just be the...

If you enjoy all-you-can-eat Japanese shabu shabu, Shabuya is probably one of the better options in Tri-Valley. I love you get individual pot so there is no sharing germs and no need to be concerned about other people's food allergies. I came here with my husband on a weekday lunch so it was not too crowded and we didn't have to wait. Otherwise, be ready for a 30-min plus wait time.

We were given a few choices of broth and I picked spicy miso while he selected the tonkatsu broth. The spicy miso is no where near fiery but it has a nice hint of kick to it and you can obviously top it up by adding more hot sauce in your sauce dip. There are a few meat to choose from, including pork belly, wagyu beef and pork shoulder as well as a chicken thigh cut. We both went for the beef and pork because chicken thigh is something we normally consume at home anyway. All the meat we tried was fresh and tasty.

For shabu lovers, we know sauce is the essence and Shabuya has a few good options. For the AYCE side dishes though, i feel there could be more. There is only 1 kind of fish and a shrimp to qualify as seafood. There are a ton of fish balls or Japanese fish cake but those are usually inexpensive. There is a decent option for vegetable but only 1 mushroom. If you like tofu products, you would be disappointed to find only 1 tofu option and no tofu skin, fried tofu nor frozen tofu.

The shabu does come with some free appetizer options such as gyoza and fried popcorn chicken. We tried both and the fried chicken we got was mostly end pieces so mostly fried batter without much meat. It was a bit disappointing.

For lunch it was $17.99 a person and children under 4 are free I believe. Dinner and weekend price is $24.99 but I am not sure if you get more food at...

A friend of mine boasted about this place knowing full well that I love hotpots. I have been to many taiwanese hotpots and Chinese hotpots as well as Korean hot pots AYCE but have never gone to a Japanese one.

Right off the bat, it was far too inside. It was already a chilly evening and I thought warmth would be awaiting me in Shabuya but was mistaken.

I sat down and was introduced to my lovely waitress who showed me the ropes. 5 broth styles, I chose the spicy miso.

Several cuts of thinly sliced meats, (beef taro is the best) and 4 appetizer options. 1 fried gyoza the other 3 types of chicken karage.

All you can eat as well as a bowl of rice if you wanted. There's also the buffet which had some seafood, veggies, different kinds of tofu and many fisballs of variety.

I was disappointed because usually I am a guy that likes to have a lot of fun in places like this but they didn't have a wide selection of fungi. Perhaps it was my being spoiled by other hotpots where I would have multiple types of mushrooms and leafy greens other than just spinach and bakchoy.

The food was good but like I said, variety was not so great. There was no lamb.

However, I did enjoy myself because I am also an avid meat lover. My favorite by far would be the all you can eat chicken karage. I would go just to eat as much of that fried chicken as possible. The music was much too loud where I couldn't hear my partner speak across the table from me but again, the waitress was a delight.

I suggest coming here for yourself. I personally would not come back by choice but I could understand the appeal. Come here and check it out and enjoy the food. Make sure you speak loudly though so you can talk with...