Food review: Shabu Shabu (Zoetermeer)

NoKey came, at my request, to pick me up from work yesterday. The weather is holding fine, and I had bribed him with the pretext of having dinner at Shabu Shabu.

Shabu Shabu is, among Rotterdam people, known as the first all-you-can-eat sushi joint in the city. As such, we had often intended to go there, but we rarely venture into the center of Rotterdam if we don't have to. We always opted for Greek food or Japanese teppan-yaki in stead of sushi. Only after we discovered SushiQube (thanks to fyrane and her Julian) did we really go into the center for sushi dinner(s). We never got around to going to Shabu Shabu until I iens'ed (Iens.nl is a food review site) for sushi joints in Zoetermeer and this one turned out to be really close by.

We eventually found Shabu Shabu - the center of Zoetermeer is a bit odd in levels and staircases, quite unusual for a Dutch city - and parked the bikes outside. One of the cooks came to look upon NoKey's strange contraption but left before we had locked them.

The decor of the restaurant was great! It really breathed a Japanese feeling and I felt at ease there. I was less pleased to be seated right next to a fourties-gentlemen and his daughter with only a shoulder-height separation panel in between us. We might as well have been at the same table. If you seat two people at a four-seat table, then perhaps having a bit more space between them and the other two people at a four-seat table will be better...
But he wasn't too distracting, and I could bear with the blonde eight-or-so daughter of his.

Perhaps it's just because we've been spoiled rotten by other Sushi restaurants like Sushi (Taksteeg, Amsterdam) or SushiQube (Pompenburg, Rotterdam), but the food was a bit disappointing. The maki sushi was well enough, but I thought the nigirizushi was a bit different than what I'm used to. The salmon on the nigirizushi had more flavour than I'm used to, and I don't like it to taste really fishy^*.
But taste is something really personal, so perhaps this will be more to other people's liking.

We also ordered beef tenderloin (gyu maki), chicken and salmon from the hibachi (tori teriyaki & sake teriyaki), fried mushrooms and zuccini/courgette (yaki mushroom & yasai mori).
Try as I might, I had a hard time trying not to compare everything to the food from SushiQube. The beef was a bit dry, the chicken good, but not superb. Courgette and mushrooms were delicious, as always. But the salmon was served with a mayonaise! I get the whole "adapt to stupid gaijin taste" thing, but I'd rather not have fish and mayonaise on the same plate.

NoKey also had tofu no dengaku, a tofu dish with teriyaki sauce and sprinkled with very thin slices of...something that moved! It smelled a bit like fish flakes, but the fact that the micron-thick slices were moving was at once fascinating and disturbing. You don't know if you want to eat it or beat it to death first^**. If anyone knows what it is, I'd like to serve it on a larp sometime!

Here's the review:

Shabu Shabu - Duitslandlaan 11, Zoetermeer
Atmosphere: 8
Food: 6,5
Service: 6

After dinner we leisurely cycled back down the Rotte to the Koornmolengat, a small park of wild nature next to the Rotte, where we picked elderberries. And tomorrow, I'll have pictures and tales of what we did to the elderberries...

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*) Smoked salmon can literally make me hurl...
**) qagh is still best served live!