ShabuRo — Restaurant in Palisades Park

My fiance's parents love this place for hot pot. They usually come during the weekday, and it's $12.95 for AYCE (not including any meats). We tried it out on a Saturday for lunch. Friday and weekend prices are more expensive.

There are three options you can go with for a weekend lunch - Buffet ($16.95) - this option includes anything on the wall that you grab yourself - veggies, fish balls, noodles. AYCE Regular ($22.95) - this option includes the buffet option and all of the basic meats like fatty beef, lean beef, lamb, chicken, sliced pork, and tripe. Then there is the AYCE Prime ($24.95) - this includes the AYCE Regular, and prime fatty beef, ribeye beef, and a bunch of seafood options like fish, shrimp, and baby octopus. If you choose the Buffet option, you can still order the meat/seafood options a la carte. So we did the AYCE Regular and ordered the Seafood Combination ($6).

My favorites included the noodles (I liked that these were two bites, so you can still have some noodles but aren't filling yourself up on them), shrimp balls, fish, and lean beef. Some of the fish balls are hit or miss. That's what I love about self-serve hot pot. You can just try one, and you don't have to worry about wasting food if it's not good or if you're too full. Don't forget to save room for dessert, which is soft serve of green tea, vanilla, or a mix of the both. The mix is too sweet, so I'm guessing vanilla was the culprit. I had green tea by itself and it was perfect.

My not so favorites were the fatty beef (don't get me wrong, it was pretty delicious but they took fatty to a new level. More than half a slice was fat) and the lobster balls.The worst I ate there (and maybe one of the worst things in life) was the fish tofu with cheese. I was kind of iffy about it but I was intrigued, so I tried it. It's just one of those fish cake tofus with American cheese instead. Do yourself a favor and skip this one. Also, most of the sauces were only okay.

Service was on point. They checked on us often but not too much that it was overbearing. There's also a button you can ring if you don't see anyone around. We rang it once to order more beef and our waiter was over so quick, that it was almost like he appeared out of thin air. On top of that, we only ordered four plates of meat for the four of us. The waiter let us know that it ended up being cheaper if we had ordered the meats a la carte, and he was nice enough to adjust our bill.

Now that I know most of the items I like/don't like, I might consider doing the prime next time and just getting a ton of...

I don’t know why there are so many people rated this one for 5 stars, it’s NOT the worst hotpot place I’ve been but definitely NOT one of the best either. Their chinese Mala broth is NOT as spicy and delicious, I hope other flavors were better, but this is not the main reason I only rated it 3 stars for the food. Reason 1: some ingredients are not so fresh. We ordered the premium all you can eat, the fat beef and lamb are fresh, but restructured for sure, shrimp and clam are also fresh plus the basa fish is tasty, which is good, but the tripe is not so good. I think it’s due to some preprocess done to it. Plus the cod fish is far from fresh and processed wrongly.. for the non-protein part, almost all the cauliflower pieces are having black spot! Tofu tastes soooooo bad! Also the Konjac! Plus they use raw hen eggs instead of pre boiled quail eggs which unreasonable… any foodie would know small quail egg tastes way much better with sauce compare to big fully boiled chicken egg. And if you crack in a raw chicken egg to the broth, it’ll be everywhere. Reason 2: all the things are way toooooo salty! The broth itself is salty enough that anything besides the raw egg boiled in would taste salty without dipping sauces. Plus the sauces are all very salty! I am not judging the badly made sesame sauce plus the colored leek sauce, I’m simply complaining that everything are way too salty.. it feels like they really DON’T want you to eat any of the dipping to save money.. I had to pour all my ice water into the broth to dilute the salt concentration but it made the flavor even dimmer… Reason 3: Setting of utilities are wrong! I know that all korean restaurants use metal chopsticks, but! Why metal chopsticks in a hot pot place??!! My mouth got burnt once or twice by the chopsticks! This is unreasonable… Also, the distance between the control panel and the corresponding pot is very far…. I almost thought my friend’s pot are mine… can’t you arrange it better??? The stupid desk arrangement is almost yelling: the owner is copying this style but don’t really know what to do.

Okk, I think the best thing in tis restaurant is their vanilla ice cream. And I do hope along all those badly made or weird dipping sauces choices(yep, they have one blueberry yogurt sesame sauce) they could make some topping for...

This is my favorite hotpot place in the tristate area. Every time I’m in NJ I make a point of coming here! Even in the summer!

So maybe $25 is expensive... to some people. But if I want a variety of things to put in my hotpot, and I mean VARIETY, $25 seems like a pretty good price to pay!

A few things: -This place gets busy after 6pm on wknds - get here early or get on the yelp waitlist. -Their broths are alright but honestly how long do things cook in hotpot. My fav tho is wild sesame. -Protein options are a little limited and they are not of the highest quality but that’s what you get for all-you-can-eat. I usually stick to fatty beef and cod.

The best things: -You can definitely eat healthy here if you are disciplined. Stick to veggies and lean protein! -The wall of goodies!! I love being able to pick just what I want, however much/little I want, whenever I want. SO many diff kinds of veggies (all sorts!!!), fish cakes, dumplings, noodles etc etc -The sauce bar gives you a lot of options and some of their pre made / house sauces are pretty good. They also have condiments! Like seaweed flakes and Sichuan peppercorns!

Other things to note: -They have parking in front. Every time I go I go early so parking has not been a problem for me. -This is a very family/kid friendly place. You would think a boiling pot of things is dangerous... haven’t seen any accidents! Truthfully, it’s really heartwarming to see three generations have a meal together. A sight rarely seen in the city! -Their soft serve is NOT BAD! I definitely indulge a little. I mean see above about eating healthy. I guess I’m not THAT disciplined. -Did I already mention this place gets busy? I feel like this is such a popular family dinner...