Taking over the former location of Georgian restaurant Batoni Khinkali, PakuPaku is a Japanese “fondue” restaurant whose name literally translates as “Eat Eat”. I put fondue in inverted comments, as I suspect this is a handy comparison used by the staff to explain shabu-shabu to Westerners who’ve never come across it. And while it does indeed involve dipping things into hot liquid, that’s about where the similarity ends. But more on that later…
![PakuPaku Amsterdam](https://www.amsterdamfoodie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PakuPaku-Amsterdam-500x667.jpg)
From there, we moved swiftly onto the shabu-shabu itself, which perhaps would better be described as a Japanese hotpot with a base of soy sauce and kombu. Unlike other similar dishes, there’s not a huge quantity of the broth – and it later becomes apparent why: having dipped and/or cooked all your meat, fish and veggies in it, you’re encouraged to eat the flavourful broth spooned over rice. For our shabu-shabu, we chose the “Ribeye Royale” (a higher grade variety of beef, although we stopped short of the eye-wateringly expensive wagyu) and the tuna. While the beef was served wafer-thinly sliced and the tuna in meatier chunks, both cooked in the broth within seconds. Whatever you order, it comes with a heaped plate of fresh vegetables, including carrot, daikon, Chinese cabbage, spinach and mushrooms, most of which take a little longer to cook. Having shabu-ed your morsel of choice, you then introduce it to two dipping sauces: one soy-based, the other sesame-based. And the resulting mouthful is pretty darn delightful. Once we were all shabu-ed out, the rice arrived; I threw in the remainder of my dipping sauces for good measure along with the broth – a delicious and waste-free way to end the meal.
![Shabu-shabu restaurant Amsterdam](https://www.amsterdamfoodie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Shabu-shabu-restaurant-Amsterdam-500x646.jpg)