Shabu Shabu and a lovely foot spa.

Miju and Lucy our old co-workers :)

Shabu shabu soup, meat, seafood and wrap stuffing.

We had a long overdue reunion with our previous co-workers last weekend. It was really lovely to see them and we caught up on the gossip down at our old kindergarten and in Masan generally.
We decided to head to a new Vietnamese Shabu Shabu restaurant which opened in Samgye where we live. Shabu shabu is a Japanese hot pot of stock and vegetables. You then dip in thin slices of raw meat or in our case seafood, and cook it over a gas burner.

Rice papers pre-dipping.

Moistening the rice papers

The Vietnamese part is the rice paper rolls you make using the cooked seafood and a variety of optional vegetable stuffing and dips. As you can see the Asian veggies are colourful and fresh. You take a solid disc of thin dried rice paper and soak it in hot lemon water. You put your boiled shrimp, squid or mussel in the middle of the moistened paper which you lay out on your plate, and you then add your choice of additional stuffing from the veggie plate! After this you wrap the entire thing up into a ball and then dip it in sweet sauces before trying to delicately devour the wrap in down in one.

The shabu shabu meal is actually made up of three separate courses. The soup and rolled rice wraps make up the first course. When all the seafood/meat is eaten a round of noodles are added to the remaining broth. The third and final course is a kind of bokkeumbap or Korean style fried rice which is added to the pot once all the broth is eaten. The remaining dregs are fried up with the rice and a raw egg to make a thick porridge.

Dips for the rice paper wraps.

Tom and I.

So that everyone was happy namely Tom, we ordered some of the thin meat and grilled this on the surrounding hot plate along with some kimchi.

After dinner, we still had lots to chat about so we headed to the coffee shop which had a very unexpected addition. We were offered a herbal foot spa while we drank our tea and coffee. The water was realllly hot but the scent of the herbs was very relaxing. What an idea!

 Another lovely dinner date in Korea! :)