1++ Hanwoo shabu-shabu for a friend treat in Seongsu: Shabu in Seoul

Looking for a place to treat a friend in Seongsu, I found Shabu in Seoul

I went out for a good meal with a friend after a while! She's always so good to me, so this time I wanted to treat her to something nice, and I searched for a long time trying to figure out where to take her. That's how I ended up at Shabu in Seoul. Seongsu has so many great restaurants and pretty cafés that picking just one actually gets harder, you know how it is haha. And that's how I discovered Shabu in Seoul!

To cut to the conclusion, this meal was pretty satisfying :) Above all I picked the 1++ Hanwoo boseopsal shabu set, the meat quality was great, and the fact that the finishing dish changes depending on the broth was more fun than I expected.

Store atmosphere and reservations — seats fill up fast

The restaurant itself was so clean, I felt like it was exactly the kind of place you'd want to bring a guest. I made a reservation and showed up right at opening, and it filled up fast haha.

The plates and table setting were just as neat as the space itself — I especially liked that they swapped out those sauce bottles every time we finished them. The tongs were nice and clean too, which I loved.

A setup where the broth you choose changes the finishing dish

One of the fun parts of Shabu in Seoul was that the finishing dish changes depending on which broth you choose. Usually when you go for shabu-shabu, you pick a broth, cook the meat in it, and finish with porridge or kalguksu (knife-cut noodles). But here the finishing menu varies by broth, so there's this fun element of deciding what you want from the very start.

Spicy mushroom shabu broth — how spicy is it, really?

After going back and forth, we chose the spicy mushroom shabu. Instead of being intensely spicy from the start, it was the kind of broth you can enjoy sipping while eating shabu-shabu, which personally worked for me. Especially once we started adding the Hanwoo, the flavor from the beef mixed into the broth, and it felt like the soup subtly changed as we went along.

If you like shabu-shabu, you know this is kind of the fun of it haha. It starts clean, then as the meat and vegetables go in, the flavor deepens and deepens!

1++ Hanwoo boseopsal shabu set — the meat quality

And what I was most looking forward to that day was, of course, the meat. I brought my friend here promising to treat her to something good, so if the meat quality had been so-so, I'd have been the one disappointed lol. That's why I chose the 1++ Hanwoo boseopsal shabu set.

Once the broth started boiling, we added the meat piece by piece and lightly cooked it, and the flavor coming off the beef was clearly good. And since shabu-shabu lets you keep adding meat little by little, it was so much nicer than eating it all at once — we could take our time with the meal.

Vegetables and the three sauces

Do I even need to say the vegetables were fresh?! Of course the quality was great! I thought the sauces would just be the usual basic ones, but somehow they were extra tasty haha, I kept reaching for them. The broth itself was so good you could just drink it plain, but the sauce was so delicious I kept dipping into it, and ended up drinking a lot of water afterward lol. Even so, I just couldn't give up dunking generously into that sauce, ugh.

Normally I love loading up soy sauce with lots of minced garlic, but that sesame sauce, why was it so good too... You really have to try all three!

The finish: rosé risotto, cooked for you tableside

When we asked for the finishing dish, they left just a little broth in the pot and cooked it right there. I figured they'd just stir some cream into the broth and call it risotto, but they added mushrooms and plump shrimp and built the risotto step by step.

Cream, cheese, even pepper — it was properly done, ugh, so good.

Worth recommending as a meeting spot in Seongsu?

On a day you want to eat a bit unhurried with a friend, or you're craving proper Hanwoo shabu-shabu, or you're looking for a meeting spot in Seongsu, this is a place worth putting on the shortlist. I especially loved the 1++ Hanwoo boseopsal shabu set I had that day, and starting with the spicy mushroom shabu and finishing with the rosé risotto really stuck with me.

I picked this place carefully because I wanted to treat a friend I'm always grateful for to something delicious, and she enjoyed it, and I personally felt good thinking 'I'm glad I brought her here' ♥. If you're looking for somewhere to meet a friend in Seongsu, or want a proper meal for once, Shabu in Seoul might be worth checking out. Next time we meet in Seongsu, I'd love to try a different broth haha.