Can This Shabu and Grill Buffet Deliver Remarkable Flavor for $25?

Some my family members cannot resist a good buffet. In my time of eating at restaurants, I have come to a place of tolerance with buffets. I have learned that my favorite way to tackle a buffet is to go for the foods that I enjoy and not try to eat a little bit of everything. Like when I go to Golden Corral, I jump on the salad and steak and eat lots of it. Or when we visit an Asian buffet that has sushi, Mongolian BBQ and lots of other stir fried foods, I concentrate on raw salmon and sushi and leave the other foods behind. But when I’m going to review a place, I have to try a little bit of everything like I have done at 98 Shabu+Grill Seafood buffet.

The Video Review

They had lots of food to choose from at this restaurant. Generally I don’t eat the seafood, so it wasn’t a surprise that the seafood I had there, the razor clams and the sea snails, I did not like. For the clams, to me it tasted like a mouthful of seawater including some of the sand that’s floating around. I absolutely did not enjoy the seafood portion of this restaurant,

The Shabu on the other hand, was a fine way to enjoy your meat and tofu. The dipping of the meats in the beef version of the beef bone soup submerged a great umami flavor once the beef came out. Being able to dip it in the salt and hot sauce after did give it a kick and flavor enhancer to get that great salty beefy flavor that people genuinely love.

The Korean BBQ portion of the buffet had a lot left to be desired. They did have Kalbi and pork belly, but they didn’t taste as good as it does when I try to make it at home. The flavor just didn’t live up to the sauces that you get in a true Korean BBQ.

So if we think about my plan for eating at buffet restaurants, in this case if I were to return to this restaurant, I would focus solely on the shabu shabu. But fortunately in this case, I don’t have to worry about it since my family decided the place wasn’t that good. I’m also not surprised as I’ve had better shabu shabu at restaurants that focus on shabu. I’ve had better Korean BBQ at restaurants that focus on Korean BBQ. So in this case, the sum of the parts aren’t better when they are put together as a whole.