This is a recap the night before Christmas eve. My girlfriends and I decided to have a little Christmas dinner together, and one of the friends really like Shabu Shabu, so we decided to try this place out.
It is a really tiny place. Reservation is recommended. Parking is a little tough, but there's always valet if you really can't find a spot. There are pretty much 3 options for the shabu shabu, seafood ~$63), beef (~$52), and a mixed (~$62). There are also different types of beef you can get depending on how much you want to spend. I thought the price is only for the shabu shabu, and I was fine with it. Guess what? It is actually a whole set of dinner consisting of six courses total.
We have three amazing appetizers: the blue fin tuna, duck soup and the sea bass. Then, it comes the main course, the seafood/meat. I was not a big fan of oyster until I had some really good ones, and the oysters here was absolutely amazing. Fresh and fairly big as well. The seafood was exceptional, huge clams, very fresh and meaty Alaskan crabs. The beef was really good as well as you can see from the fat pattern of the meat. The shabu shabu comes with a bunch of greens, mushrooms as well as noodles. We were so full afterwards.
After we were done with the shabu shabu, they took the soup and made it into porridge, which was absolutely delicious. You also have a choice of udon.
After all that food, we still have dessert! There are a variety to choose from, and we had banana pudding, crème brûlée and green tea mousse cake. They are all very good. I especially like the green tea mousse cake, it's slightly bitter, but very strong matcha flavor. It normally has condensed milk over it, but I think it is good as is.
Candy Cane Lane
After dinner, we decided to find a little Christmas, so we went to the candy cane lane. We have all lived in LA for so long, but never been here. There are two different ones, and we went to the older one in Woodland Hills. It was pretty packed with families. I guess we weren't the only people who wants to see some extravagant Christmas light decoration!
We saw a real train, a real sleigh, a big snowman, and a lot of Santa Clauses. It was real cool to see all the decorations. We were all wondering where do these things go when it's not Christmas?
