Mo-Mo-Paradise - Torrance

Quality ingredients: crispy and fresh veggies, several types of noodles, and more veggies than you can name, including tofu for vegetarians to get their protein. They even have a boba/jelly bar to wash it all down.

A split pot of sukiyaki and kimchi bases will cover all your bases. There's soy sweetness to counter a pickled burn. 

The beef is amazing quality. Sliced so thin it cooks almost instantly. The fattier cut is more juicy, and the leaner is more beefy. The pork looks amazing as well. 

Go when you're hungry and go with friends who know how to hot pot properly. Use all your time and take your time to enjoy every bite. You'll want multiple plates for all the selections, and you'll need to have an appetite to enjoy them all. Eat as much or as little as you like here. You'll get your money's worth either way. 

Shinsengumi Shabu - Gardena

Another shin-sen-gumi in the South Bay? MUST GO. I love the ramen, the yakatori is great, and surely the shabu can't miss!

AYCE is an irresistible deal, but theirs should also come with a warning. You'll find no fault with a pot of water and konbu, nor with the unlimited plates of tofu, udon, and Napa cabbage.

All is fine, really, until you get to the beef. Suffice it to say, the quality is crap. The meat slices have turned dark from aging in a freezer, and the freezer burn is apparent in each leathery slice. I tried cooking them for progressively less time to no avail.

Bad meat in an awkwardly-placed shabu pot had all three diners straining to reach the food, an effort so distracting that I actually forgot to take photos. Pretty impressive - nothing has entered my mouth without first being photographed for over a year.

Some people do have it all, but I'm sad to say that Shinsengumi is not quite a jack of all trades. The yakatori is good and the ramen is highly recommended, but shabu just isn't their strong suit.

IShabu Shabu - Redondo Beach

They were having their soft opening so the service doesn't count. The servers tell me they were thrown into the fire, and my, what a hot mess it made. Everyone was scrambling; the servers, the slicer, and undoubtedly all 15 people sitting at that impossibly large table in the back.

I love the open set-up, consisting mostly of bars and countertops with strategically-placed shabu pots. Unfortunately, the placing of the seats needs work. There was a lot of awkward, hope-you-wore-deodorant reaching-over-your-neighbor to get to your pot. Seeing your meat sliced in front you is a perk, but with so many people eating and only one person slicing, you also see how slowly they move.

No sukiyaki broth at the soft opening, but the traditional slice of seaweed stews suitably in a soon-to-be soup.

Appetizers are for other places, but the veggies are plenty to tempt the palate. You get a little bit of everything and just enough of anything. Napa cabbage stews up nicely, as do all the different mushrooms. Kabocha is a nice touch, the tofu is a classic, and there's even a sweet little fishcake and a lobster bouncy-ball to round it out.

All three dipping sauces go with everything, and you can amuse yourself with dipping different ends of each vegetable in different sauces while you wait for the meat. All permutations of salty and bitter House Barbecue; toasty, nutty Sesame, and light soy n' sour Seafood Sauce taste surprisingly good.

The seafood features quite the selection of giant mussels, sizable shrimp, and these medium Scallops. A little on the rubbery, slippery side but at worst the quality is standard. It's prime time with paper-thin slices of Angus Prime Ribeye. You can see through the slices, but the flavor is solid and full.

It's game on with the Lamb. Tougher but just as thin. The US Kobe is lighter and less in-your-face, but all of them add a lot of savor as they stew.

When I went to IShabu Shabu, it was so brand-spanking-new, like shoes that need to be broken in. It was expectedly rough around the edges and had a lot kinks to iron out, but this friendly, family-owned shabu shack is a welcome alternative to King Shabu, and I think their potential will bubble as every pot boils.

King Shabu Shabu - Torrance

After a visit to the neighboring Little Sheep, I figured King Shabu Shabu would be close enough. Only a couple of blocks and a complex separate the two, after all, but it turns out the hot pot was worlds apart. 

My first issue with King Shabu started when I first sat down...in front of a boiling pot of just plain water. Sure, the meat and veggies will cook just fine in any medium, but where is the flavorful broth to season them?

Despite the slower start, the Angus Ribeye and the Lamb were of undeniable quality and were packed with flavor, even if the broth was not. The thing is, just a single plate of either costs almost as much as an unlimited meal at Little Sheep. 

The Veggie Plate comes with every order of meat, and the enoki mushrooms, Napa cabbage, and tofu do cover all the bases, but the selection still leaves a bit to be desired. I don't care for boiled carrots, for example, and it would have been nice to have more choices.

The Udon noodles are always the best way to finish, as they steep in the water, which is now infused with veggies and meat. But to really give it a kick you have to know which of the oils to add and how many drops to drip. And for that you just have to hope that your server is in a helpful mood.

You would think that when two different cultures converge into one literal melting pot, they would reach some kind of consensus, but that just didn't happen here between the Mongolians and the Japanese. King Shabu Shabu may be a bit more polished than Little Sheep, but is the cost really worth a little service?