Shabu Shabu Split Bowl

An odd title to a post, but tonight we went out to have a bit of shabu shabu for the first time in a while.

For those who don’t know, shabu shabu is a meal where you have a big bowl of boiling water, and you sweep (or drop in and leave) very thin slices of beef or pork through it until it’s cooked and then eat it with different sauces like sesame (for example). The same goes for vegetables too – just put some carrots in there or such, pull them out when they’re ready and eat away.

We went to a branch of the Mo Mo Paradise chain in Ginza, and the twist here is that you don’t just get a choice of water to cook your sliced meat in, but of three soups: cow’s tongue, kimuchi and a salt based, potentially pork based one. We went for the first two. At this point in my order, I thought I’d got it wrong as the waitress said we’d need two nabe (pots/pans), one for each soup.

Ah. I was trying to see how we were going to fit two pots on the heating element in the middle of the table, and still be able to heat them both, when the waitress returned with split bowl shown below, in an almost yin-yang configuration. for reference, that’s the kimuchi on the right. I just thought I’d post it because I’d never seen one like this before, and it looked pretty good.

split soup bowl for shabu shabu