Na-Nu Na-Nu, Shabu-Shabu

Our friends Eling and Dane were in town last night, so My Better Half and i met them for dinner on the little island. We foolishly had never eaten anywhere in the Korean strip on West 32nd Street, so we popped into a place called Pho32 & Shabu, which (as its name and location imply) serves up Vietnamese pho and Japanese shabu-shabu for a primarily Korean crowd. Thankfully the menu is in both Korean and English.

Now, i know that many of my faithful readers have been eating shabu-shabu since they wore swaddling clothes, but this was my first time, so i was pretty excited. It's got some of the same make-your-own-meal appeal (or lack thereof, i suppose, for some) as Korean barbecue: you get a bowl of broth simmering on a hotplate, some very thinly sliced raw meat, and a big plate of veggies, bean curd, and fish cakes to play with. It's a very fun thing to do with a small table-full of friends -- an "interactive meal" as Eling described it -- and a bit easier on the stomach than, say, an enormous fondue.

The verdict: yums.