Kaizen Shabu — Restaurant in Santa Ana

Instead of sitting in traffic on the 5 freeway, we decided to stop by downtown Santa Ana for an early dinner. My husband and I love shabu and tried pretty much every location in Orange County, so why not try this new location. I believe it's only beem opened for a couple of months. Its tucked right next to Yost theater. Decor is gorgeous with a modern twist. They have a full bar!!

We wanted to try the basic meat with their shabu shabu basic broth. So we ordered the large (sumo) size yojie beef and their large (samurai) Swai fish (because I've never had swai fish with shabu before. They have a combo plate that's great for sharing (they do have a reasonable solit entree fee).

The meat was good, I'm glad it didn't come out with frozen slices (always wait for meat to thaw before cooking). The yojie beef wasn't too fatty. Swai fish was soft and tender (dont over cook in broth). Veggies and udon was basic like any other place. We opted for brown rice which was I understand can be hard in texture, but it was a really hard to swallow so i asked for a bowl of white rice, which was also under cook and a but hard. Work on the rice texture please!!

Sauces=ponzu it was alright, a little too much soy sauce for me, I like it more tangy with a bit more citrus. Goma was good, no complaints there. They also have a third sauce Swisher which is sweet and savory which they let us try for free. It was too sweet for me. Each platter comes with only 2 sauces. Ask to try them before committing.

Service was great we were constantly checked on they made sure we knew what we were doing. Overall good food and...

There are a lot of good shabu places in the OC, and my previous favorite spot was Mokkoji......until I tried Kaizen.

I'll be honest and say that the service here IS a bit slower, and I think that is a management issue, but the food here makes up for that. The layout of the restaurant is also kinda weird. There is no "traditional" table seating, as it is only bar seating.

The owner, Lamson, is very inviting and super friendly. And he knows shabu. We ordered the tonkotsu and the tom yum, and Lamson recommended that we added the black garlic oil. That enhanced the soup's flavor greatly. Great recommendation. Even without it, the soup itself was very flavorful. So flavorful that once you cooked the meat in it, you didn't really need any sauce because the soup literally soaked the flavor into the meat. Not a lot of other shabu places have soups this flavorful.

The pot style is also really cool - it's like a metal/clay-looking pot with a traditional handle to carry it. Nice touch. I ordered the angus beef and the quality is just very high. You can tell that the quality of the food here is very high.

After we finished the dinner, we had room for the green tea white chocolate fondue. This is highly recommended. The Melting Pot doesn't offer green tea white chocolate, and Kaizen does it as well as they do.

Lastly, this place closes at 12am on Fridays and Saturdays, while most shabu places are closed by 9 or 10pm on those days. So, you can get shabu late if you're in the area. Highly recommended as the quality of the soup and meats are just...

I am in between a 4.5 and a 5 stars. We had a reservation to this place and when we got there, the host kept pushing us to the back to wait. We weren’t clear to what he wanted and kept waiting in the wrong spot and kept pushing back. This place is street metered parking or parking in the lot with a meter. They had outside dining, fortunately, we were able to sit inside because I was cold. The wait to be seated was less than 5 minutes.

When we got seated, we were greeted by the owner. He introduced himself and gave us hot sake on the house, which was nice! I am a weak drinker and my boyfriend was driving, so unfortunately, some of it had to go to waste. If you are new joiner and not driving or a weak drinker, I suggest getting the sake!

We ordered two combo plates and two cocktails. The combo plates comes with 2 meats, veggies, sauce, broth, and rice. One of the combo plates I ordered angus beef and pork belly and the other one I ordered angus beef and korabuta park. They were sooo good, especially the ponzu sauce! They didn’t advertise this, but ask for their special chili oil! It was very spicy with just 3 drops. I love spicy, so I’d come back just for the chili oil.

For cocktails, we ordered the Sunset Rio and Passion of the Shito. Both were good. Order came out fast.

The service was good. The restaurant was very busy, so we understand. They seemed a bit forgetful and didn’t check on us often, but they were very friendly and tried to be helpful. We kindly reminded our needs.

Overall, I’d definitely come back...