Ohsumi's shabu shabu ....... a light tasting meat meal

Cuppage Plaza has always been our good source of Japanese food. We've tried sumiyaki, sushis, even izakaya food. This time round we were there for Ohsumi's Shabu Shabu. If you are a Chinese steamboat lover and a staunch believer that we get chicken, fish ... stock, or that myriads of herbs, with many ingredients to get a sweetened soup base, you'll be in for a surprise and maybe even a disappointment.

I am a Chongqing steamboat and fish head steamboat lover. So, I've brought with me, my own preconception of a steamboat meal to this virgin shabu shabu dinner. Inevitably, I felt sore and cheated over the lack of taste and flavors in this Japanese meal until I learnt out more about shabu shabu. Still I couldn't reconcile this meal with my taste buds. HY could and thought it was light and good. Well, it's just my personal taste preference, no one else's fault.

Plain water as Soup Base?

There was no tasty soup base to start with, only plain boiling water to cook our meat. This seemed absurp to me as a newbie to shabu shabu. According to what I learnt later, the idea of Ohsumi's shabu shabu was to taste the natural flavor of the meat, untainted by other flavors. We started dumping the vegetables into the steamboat and then as the soup start to boil we start cooking the meat one slice at a time.

Standard heap of vegetable, mushrooms, tofu, mochi and vermicelli that came with every standard set of meat.

Beef Set

This is the dish of regular sliced beef from the beef set cost S$42++. It was the most economical type of beef available. There's the wagyu set if you prefer more tender slices of beef at S$75++.

Assorted Kurobuta Set

This assorted Kutobuta set consisted of slices of belly, loin and shoulder meat from the revered Berkshire black pig @ S$45++. My first experience with this tender pork was in the bowl of ramen at Tampopo.

Having them simply cooked inside boiling water was a first for me.

Some taste at last!

I was glad that at least Ohsumi provided 3 dip sauces for my meal, else I wouldn't have survived the ordeal. Eating Kurobuta dunk in boiling water..... huh? There was the soya sauce, the ponzu sauce and the sesame sauce. I got all my meat dunked into the dip dishes like there was no tomorrow.

This was by far the 'healthiest' meal that I had out of Kurobuta pork, no offense to the Grilled and Deep Fried Kurobutas that I'm more smittened with. As for steamboats, Oh Sumi-masen, get me that 麻辣 Ma La Chongqing steamboat, I need more flavors please!

5 Koek Road

#03-24/28 Cuppage Plaza

Tel : 6235 6178

Singapore