Ohsumi Japanese Restaurant, Cuppage Plaza

This would be our first attempt at the simplicity of real Japanese shabu shabu down at Ohsumi (5 Koek Road, #03-24/28, Cuppage Plaza, tel : +65 6235 6178) which I've been passing by on multiple occasions and eyeing for quite a while. From what I've heard, this shop specializes in pork which constitutes half of more of their shabu options on the menu. Of course, wagyu can always be had for those with the intent to splurge. We picked the all you can eat pork option since this was a first visit so that we could gorge ourselves and decide if we like it enough to come back another time for their pricier kurobuta or beef equivalents.

The pork shabu came with loin, shoulder and belly cuts along with a platter of vegetable and oddly, two house made meatballs which were actually pretty damned good. Quality of meat served was pretty good; if a little lacking in natural flavour which I was hoping to experience from a clean cooking in a broth that was so lightly flavoured by little but wong bok and a bit of mushrooms. Still, the accompanying house made ponzu and goma sauces along with some unexpected options of sliced chilli padi and finely chopped garlic rescued that. What I was wondering was, are those chilli padi a thing in shabu shabu?

And since it was all you can eat, we hit up another large platter of meat and vegetables after the initial serving along with extra orders of those tasty meatballs. I'm not sure if there had been another time when I had so much pork in a seating, but we were pretty porked out by the time we finished.

The service here was attentively polite and snappy though they seem to tend to forget orders. The feelings are mixed over here. I would like to be back for another shot at something else, but it's easily a triple digit bill.