TOM'S BIRTHDAY DINNER

Ok. I realize I haven't blogged in nearly 2 months. And the fact that I'm blogging about Tom's birthday dinner, which took place in early March, just goes to prove how long it's been. However, let's recap what's happened in the last 2 months : visited Portland, visited Boston, got engaged, bought a house and are currently in escrow. (Did I mention that getting engaged and buying a house happened in the same two week span?) So to say that we've gone through some big, life changing events would be accurate.

However, I'm spending a lot of time at work these days (until I can hire a new employee) so I've got a bit more time to blog. So back to the post. For Tom's birthday, I took him to a surprise birthday dinner at a shabu restaurant in Berkeley called Zabu Zabu. It's sort of in this hidden location on University, but turns out it's actually pretty popular, especially among the university crowd.

We haven't been to a shabu restaurant since moving to this coast, so I didn't really know what to expect. But now I know that it's pretty much like shabu in Boston, except that it costs way more. So Zabu Zabu is actually known for it's all you can eat shabu, and they have all these different options. The only problem is, if one person orders all you can eat, everyone else has to, which is kinda crappy since I'm the most useless person when it come to all you can eat. But we decided to go with the all you can eat appetizers and all you can eat shabu (you can also get all you can sushi).

First, you get your usual set of sauces:

With the all you can eat, you can pretty much order any variety of meats - pork, chicken, beef or lamb. Of course, I went with chicken and here's the little bowl of veggies that it comes with:

Then there were the appetizers. You actually get a choice of like 12 appetizers, and again, it's unlimited. Here's the fried chicken (it was ok)

And here's an order of seaweed salad. We also got mussels, calamari and I don't remember what else. They were all pretty good.

And our all you can eat meal also came with dessert - my favorite - green tea ice cream. Overall, the food here was pretty good. I still still think the price is pretty high - the cheapest all you can eat is $25 for shabu only, and if you don't want all you can eat, it's like $18, compared with $12 in Boston. However, I'd go back for a special occasion. Otherwise, I'll just make shabu at home, like my mommy does.