Shabu Hot Pot — Restaurant in Springfield

Went for their soft opening and staff were all so welcoming and nice. Service was a little slow understandably as it was their first day. The team did a great job providing great service and making sure each customer felt taken care of despite it likely being a stressful day for them. I am really excited that Springfield has a hotpot place and I hope it does well. I do have some feedback and hope they continue to improve.

Food was honestly not up to my expectations. If you’ve never had hot pot I think you’ll have a good experience and enjoy the food. However if you’ve grown up eating hotpot or have been to ayce hotpot places before, you’ll likely be a little disappointed. soups: I got the spicy and I expected it to be mala spice flavored as that is usually what it is at hotpot places. It was instead a sweet and sour soup that tastes more like tomyum. It does have a good tomyum flavor and the soup seems to be homemade so if you like that I would recommend. It is not spicy at all so it would be nice if there is an actual spicy flavor and then maybe label the current one “tomyum”? My friend had the beef soup and stated it tasted like pho broth. conveyer belt: clean and kept full. vegetables: good variety of fresh and clean vegetables and mushrooms. seafood: shrimp and calamari were good. Fish tofu wasn’t the best quality. Would also pass on the crab-didn’t taste fresh, although I wouldn’t expect an ayce place to have fresh crab. meat: meat is not cut thin as it should be for Chinese or Korean hotpot (not sure if thicker cuts are normal for other countries). We got all the beef varieties and only one of them looked different. I couldn’t tell the difference between the rest of the beef cuts from how they looked or how they tasted. None of the meat seemed to be very high quality and all the cuts were pretty lean. Pork belly was okay. pot: each person gets an individual pot of soup which is nice. The pot is a larger size than commonly seen at other individual hotpot places and half of it is blocked off to set food that is cooked so it makes the actual soup area smaller. The burner wasn’t very strong. sauce bar: solid options. Seating is pretty tight for anyone larger than an...

We went here on a Saturday shortly after they opened at 11am. It was just a party of two and we got right in. Waiter sat us down and went over the lunch options. We ordered and got waters and enjoyed our meal. Pretty standard. Pros - Food was delicious and the conveyor had plenty of food coming that was fresh. The options for soup base were great even though I didn't care for pineapple in my spicy soup base. Was still a great flavor.

Cons - no napkins. We had to ask for them and only got a couple. The sauce station only has small individual cups but no tray to put them non so if you wanted to try them all you'll have to make a few trips. I'd suggest they use small trays set off to the side. Or a mobile sauce station where a waiter/waitress could come around. The tables are not big guy friendly. Knocked knees, and hard to get out of the seats etc.

Here is my biggest complaint. I will say this won't prevent us from going again but it did make me salty.

Our waiter brought our receipt for our "lunch" menu. We are done and proceeded to pay. The guy behind the counter looks at it and says this was wrong. We were confused. He calls for the Waiter and told him it was dinner all day on Saturday, so instead of it being 19.99 a person it's supposed to be 29.99 a person. With this in mind we were presented with only the lunch options. Not the other 4 options that come with dinner.

The ticket was for 43 and change. The guy behind the counter said and I quote, "I'm sorry for our misquote but it's actually 65 and change" I smiled and said not our mistake, but we will only pay what's on the ticket we were given. He proceeded to suggest we did something wrong "ok this one time I'll charge you this but in the future." Shabu, please fix that. He only charged us what's on the ticket but he was visibly upset about it. Keep in mind this was pur very first ever interaction with this restaurant.

Again, we'll come back and hope we have a better experience...

I was so excited to try this place but my initial impression was kind of a letdown. I'm hopeful they'll get some of this sorted in the future.

Seating We were seated In a booth near the windows. My husband was totally blinded by the sun for a good chunk of the meal. They did eventually help him move but it wasn't ideal.

That honestly wouldn't have been a big deal on its own but the seating here was the most uncomfortable seating I've ever dined in. The booths have shallow wooden benches with far too much space between the diner and the table. You can't scoot forward because the bench is shallow but sitting back made dining both messy and uncomfortable.

I left with a sore back and numb legs!

Food I got the pork broth and it was fine. I felt the cuts of meat didn't seem super high quality. They were pretty average and honestly hard to tell apart.

I wanted to like the conveyor belt but there were a few major concerns.

Hot prepared foods were mixed in with raw items. Things like fried potstickers and spring rolls. They were unpleasantly cold and it's confusing to serve them side by side with hotpot ingredients. Maybe consider having a separate hot bar. At the price point, I really expect better than cold fried foods.

The conveyor belt had a lot of seafood, mushrooms, and greens but lacked other vegetables. I was surprised there was no zucchini, onions or carrots. I was desperate for vegetables!

The images on the menu don't represent the offerings. Your menu has a photo of Coke Zero, but you don't carry it. Several hotpot photos include carrots but there were no carrots.

I saw the conveyor belt on the other side getting a variety of noodle types and corn. We had to ask for it on our side because after 45 mins we hadn't seen any of those items.

I think this place has potential but the execution isn't quite there. I want to like it but for the price point... I'd probably go...