Shabu Sai Orchard Central

The spread is decent for $ 20 (all in without the free flow soda and ice cream) during lunch time. You get 70 minutes to dine and they will come round with a slip of paper indicating what time you need to end your meal about 30 minutes before that.
You get lots of vegetables and a few types of mushrooms and some processed food on the buffet counter. There are also 6 types of sushi (rice is hard and quality is not that great) and 3 types of noodles (glass, ramen and udon) plus rice for your carbs.
For the meat, you just tell the server what you wish to have (regular beef, pork and chicken). The quality of the beef was not as good as Shi Li Fang and the cut had plenty of gristle. The pork was totally frozen hard, even after 70 minutes it was still very tough so we left it. The chicken was a surprise. It was sliced thinly which made it quite tasty.
The soup we had was good. We chose sukiyaki and yuzu collagen.
The sauces and condiments were plenty so have fun concocting your preference.
I would say it is a decent hot pot place Japanese style with a wide variety of food but do not expect much for the meat.

The selling point of this place has to be the communal feeling, buffet spread of ingredients, and the price.
I came with two colleagues for lunch on a weekday, and the place was barely filled. Lunch apparently has a time limit, but nobody checks, and waitstaff are friendly and approachable.
The meats are fresh (don’t bother with the chicken), just go for the pork and beef. I love the spread of vegetables and accompaniments displayed very nicely in their refrigerated «boxes», as well as the fact that you can make your own dipping sauce just like most Chinese hotpot places. We had the kimchi and chicken broths, and let’s just say the kimchi broth wasn’t awesome — stick to chicken! For three people at lunch, it was about $ 20 per person. We had a massive food coma from this.
Plus: They accept Amex cards.
Minus: At the dipping sauce corner, the cilantro/​coriander jar, has very very old (think 10 days) coriander at the bottom of it. I think they should wash it, but otherwise, no other issues with this place.

Visited this new established branch with my colleague yesterday evening for dinner. Overall, I was impressed.
I’ve visited a couple of Shabu Shabu /​Steamboat restaurants, and Shabu Sai is of good value.
The Queue:
When we arrived (around 6:30), there was no queue to get into the restaurant. We were seated immediately and chose our soup base (s).
The Food:
We went with the Sukiyaki Broth and the Chicken Broth, and chose all three types of meat (beef, chicken, pork). The meat is brought to your table in small trays — thinly sliced and well presented. I was impressed with the cut and quality of the meat — nice and red with marbling and slight fat.
The buffet selection (where you go up to get items) primarily consisted of noodles (ramen, soba, udon), vegetables (gailan, radish, lettuce, etc.) and fish items (i.e., fish ball, fish paste, crab meat). They also had a decent selection of sushi available too. All items were put under fridge/​freezing temperature cooling to obviously keep the food fresh.
The broth ended up being quite salty — so when getting our bowl topped up, we asked that they fill it with water, rather than additional broth — to dilute the saltiness.
Overall, the service was OK — they were definitely understaffed (there was also a long Q waiting for tables by 8:30) and several items, such as the sauce station and the soft-​serve ice cream machines (yes, you read that right) were perpetually empty. It took a good 5 – 10 minutes for them to get around to refilling it.
I’d return — and I would hope that they have gotten the logistics sorted by then. I think more staff coverage and attending to tables (i.e., clearing empty plates, refilling water/​stock, and maintaining upkeep of the buffet items) is something to work on.