Bon Shabu — Restaurant in Los Angeles

We went in on Monday, January 2, 2022 - day after New Years. Overall the place doesn't seem to be staffed properly and your dining experience may be a draw of luck. It's a fancy looking place that charges $60 per person during dinner for AYCE shabu shabu (when other places charge $30) and their menu boasts expensive sounding 4 types of wagyu, 5 types of prime beef and other unusual meats like lamb.

Their Facebook page posted a week ago that "reservation through Facebook direct message strongly recommended", but I messaged on Facebook and got no response. It's been 3 days, and the Facebook message still does not have the "read" checkmark.

We went in, and there were about 20 customers and 15 workers (waiters/cleaning/serving staff). After we were seated by the front desk staff, it took 20+ minutes for another staff to come by and take our meats order. After waiting another 20+ minutes, we talked to 2 other staff and one of them ran to the kitchen saying "yes! we'll get you the meat!" and came back with 4 trays, but I have no idea whether those were our orders. We ordered 3 meats. Also, all in all a Shabu Shabu is not the type of cooking where we can savor the improved texture and flavor of wagyu. Was it even wagyu? Who knows. It's beef, it's fine.

And after the first order of meat came in, that was the end of it. No one ever approached us ever again. All waitstaff were running around, busily carrying trays of meat, talking to customers, going back and forth from the kitchen. Another table of customers who arrived after we did got more orders than we did. We kinda felt bad trying to grab and talk to the waitstaff beause they were permanently on a rush, carrying things. After a long time, we grabbed someone to ask, who again apologized and brought trays of meat. This time, we didn't even know what meat we were getting, because he didn't take any orders. He just brought us random trays of meat. We really had to hunt down waitstaff to get our one bottle of water, and some trays of meat.

We were getting hungry, and ate half of our stuff from the salad/side dishes bar. The side dishes section include some cooked meat: fried chicken, ttokbokee fishcake, chinese-style fried chicken, bulgogi, spicy bulgogi. We mostly ate those while trying to get our next meats tray. Having those precooked meats on the salad bar saved the night, because otherwise we would have been very hangry trying to catch the waitstaff.

I find it strange that there were almost as many staff as customers in the restaurant but somehow they were so busy that they couldn't even talk to each table to take the next orders. Are they restocking the supplies room? Working on construction? Maybe some are in the backroom negotiating the building insurance quote over the phone, in between each trip taking orders from customers. ¯(ツ)/¯ They were also constantly running out of supplies.

My takeaway from this whole ordeal is that when we are dipping meat in water, meat is gonna taste roughly the same whether it's a $30 place or a $60 place. We'll go to a $30...

The service and atmosphere were fine for us, but the food was super disappointing. It's most definitely not worth the price.

For context, we've eaten Shabu Shabu multiple times across North America and Japan. We also love Korean food, both here and in SK. We also eat hot pot all the time (at home and at restaurants).

The most important thing in any hot pot is the broth. The selection/flavors of their broths just downright sucked. They were so bland that the cooked meat and vegetables tasted like they were just boiled in water. I dont like excess salt, but it felt like not a drop of sodium was part of those broths. To make matters worse, there was no salt with the sauce selection to give the food more flavor.

...leading us to the sauce selection. The house sauce was meh, ponzu is ponzu (good as usual, but sweet, so limited in use cases), but overall there was no sauce that had some actual kick/flavor. We added soy sauce to peanut sauce, which kinda sorta was alright, but not great since it gave an awkward after taste.

Sadly, the best thing there was the KFC (프라이드 치킨 and 양념치킨). We make it at home, and we were impressed that there's was as good as ours (we mastered the recipe). With that being said, they aren't in the business of selling fried chicken at reasonable prices.

Don't even look at the desert part of the menu. We're talking cheap, no frills, quality popsicle sticks.

We left hungry/unsatisfied (at an AYCE, crazy I know) since we were tired of eating bland meat and veggies.

The best part was when the waiter showed me the tip selection screen on the portable sale system. I tried to pull it out of his hands so I could do the tip in my own space, but he wouldn't let go! Just stared my way as I selected, clearly attempting to peer pressure me into a min 18% tip for what was a super disappointing meal already. I just did the math for 14% while looking at him (and I should have done less, considering we barely ate anything).

Unfortunately, visiting again is going to be a...

You would never expect this spot where it sits. You can enter through the front or back. I entered through the back since there's a parking lot garage in the back. My brother and I arrived here at about 11:35am, and we were there for under 2 hours. The restaurant validates parking, however, we ended up still having to pay $2 even with the validation. We decided to do the AYCE Wagyu Menu for $58 per person. We just ordered the Wagyu Brisket, Wagyu Chuck Roll, Wagyu Short Plate, and Wagyu Chuck Tender. Our favorite meat was the Wagyu Short Plate. We only lasted one round of Wagyu Selection, so not sure we really got our money worth. I ate more udon noodles and konjac, while my brother had the ramen noodles. However, everything was tasty. I love how you have so many veggie, noodles, and sauce options. They have some cake options. If you want ice cream, I think it's an additional $1. The place itself is really nice. Clean, sleek, modern. Each seating has a vent system. There's also AC circulating through the restaurant, so it doesn't feel stuffy. Our service was fast, so thanks to Chris. They have a solid and affordable lunch menu prices. Definitely...