Zabu Zabu - San Mateo

The staff and food were great. The waitstaff were very attentive to our large group of

Great food and fun concept.but the service was a bit slow.

Outstanding, delicious, and memorable. The beef was so good here we ordered well over plates between friends, and that's not including the other meats we ordered as well. The broth selections were accommodating, equally delicious, and definitely healthier than just plain raw meat in fatty oils. Generous amounts of vegetables and the option to order more. I would definitely come back again!

Terrible service. We waited for minutes for someone to seat us. It was cold inside. And the tip is automatically included. A disappointment and expensive.

This brought back fond memories of pleasant dinners with my host families in Japan years ago, eating shabu-shabu around the family hot pot. The taste (at least to my Western-but-Japanese-food-loving palate) was spot on. There were kinds of meat: two kinds of beef and also lamb, several kinds of mushrooms, tofu, yam slices, carrots, cabbage, raddishes (whole and grated), dipping sauce, etc. the whole shebang. The all-you-can eat buffet was awesome so delicious and a great value! EXCEPT for the guilt I felt when I left, since half of the food went uneaten. I guess I can understand why all-you-can-eat buffets don't allow you to take home the leftovers, but yikes, what a colossal waste of nourishing (and extremely tasty) food.! The service was great but again, the servers' main concern was making sure we had enough food and they kept erring on the side of bringing too much. But if you go with a group AND make sure to ask the server beforehand NOT to immediately bring piles and piles of food (as they did for us), then you will have a delicious meal without the guilty aftertaste of leaving half of it uneaten on the table. One other thing worth noting, though, is that if you are vegetarian AND gluten-free AND soy free like my husband, it is much less exciting. Most of the good sauces have trace amounts of gluten because of the soy, and although there are plenty of veges to accompany the noodles and meat, there aren't really enough of them to stand on their own if that is ALL you are eating. And the gluten-free broth options are pretty bland. So if you have all of these dietary restrictions, I would look elsewhere.