PASSIONATE RATIONS

I’m staring at a 2-inch long angry-red line on my left hand and remembering fondly my Saturday night dinner.

I first noticed Shabu-Zen on my way out of Boston many months ago. Tucked away on a street in Chinatown, I could see its facade as I drove away from my employer’s home office, back home.

I hadn’t eaten Shabu style since I lived in L.A., so I tucked its location into the back of my mind. On Saturday, we spent the day in Boston’s Back Bay. We had been slated to eat at L’Espalier, but canceled those plans due to my terminal post-nasal drip. (I don’t want to eat at one of the nation’s best restaurants without my full faculties intact. Stay tuned for that review.). So, instead, we ate a lunch of tapas at Tapeo (acceptable, but overpriced–largely due to its location on Newbury Street, I suspect) and, based on my memory of the Shabu house, wandered on foot into Chinatown for dinner.

Shabu-shabu is Japanese hot-pot cuisine. You order your carb (Udon noodle, vermicelli or rice) and your main entree (everything from vegetables to octopus to Kobe beef). These come to you cold. It is up to you to place them, and the condiments and vegetables provided, into the steaming pot of broth before you in whatever combination you desire.

My beef came to me in lovely white-veined red roll-ups that I placed gently into the bubbling tumult. They browned to perfection. I lifted them out with chopsticks, dipped them in my custom-blended soy-sauce-chile-scallion concoction, placed them gently on my already steamed noodle and vegetables and had a very satisfying meal (though one I won’t fully review here, since my taste buds have been off-track, as noted above).

Truly, this must be the best value for a satisfying Saturday-night dinner in Boston. For the two of us, it was only $30, and that included beer. And, a testament to its value, the place was packed when we got there (around 8:30ish). They are open until 2:00 a.m. on weekends and I had the feeling they probably stayed busy until closing.

Be careful though. This cuisine can be dangerous, as an errant noodle taught me. Somehow, as I was lifting ingredients out of the pot, a noodle smacked against my hand. I now have the scars of my hard-fought (and fun) meal.