My love of shabu shabu is no secret, but on this particular visit, a friend and I indulged in dessert there after our reliably delicious beef shabu shabu. There are three icecream flavours on the dessert menu – green tea, black sesame and red bean – all traditional Japanese dessert flavours. I picked the black sesame and my friend tried the red bean flavour. The scoops were $3.80 each and came out in a side dish-sized bowl, with one reasonably sized scoop inside. The black sesame scoop was a not-completely-appealing grey colour, but had a really fascinating savoury taste. The icecream was very creamy and at first that hid the sesame flavour, which made an appearance on the back palate at the end of the mouthful. The more I ate, the clearer the flavour became, and whilst it wasn’t as sweet as I expected, my friend preferred that to the sweeter red bean flavour. I tried a bite of the red bean, and actually thought it worked better, the sweet flavour pairing well with the creaminess. The verdict? Japanese icecream flavours are an adventure, definitely worth a try with varying sweet-savoury options!
Mr Shabu Shabu, 6/35 Childers St, Canberra ACT, no website
Aaaahh I love shabu-shabu so much! You just reminded me a new restaurant opened up on the other side of town, I’ve really got to go there. I’m curious, do shabu-shabu restaurants outside of Japan do tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat)? I think I’ll miss that the most when I eventually leave Japan.
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Good question Wren Diamond! Unfortunately this one doesn’t do tabehoudai but I haven’t sought out shabu shabu in bigger cities like Sydney where (I expect) there would be a larger Japanese expat community. Let me know if you do find a tabehoudai one though, I’d be keen to try it!
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