Swish Cafe & Shabu Shabu

Cute spot. Not fancy at all, but cheap and cheerful.
Wandered in here on a cold winter evening and shabu shabu was the perfect way to warm up. Between two of us, we got a large soup with a large serve of beef slices, cabbage, vermicelli noodles, enoki mushrooms and tofu as well as a beer and all up the total was just over $ 40 including tip.
Quality of the food was great, simple but tasty.
Service was efficient.
Would come back again!

Best shabu shabu in the city! Great little family run restaurant that’s never crowded and well priced. Good for takeout sushi as well

The food here was just okay. I went in because of the lunch specials, but it was very underwhelming. And the place is a dump inside. Won’t be going back.

Dirty bathrooms, rude staff, and mediocre food. And unfortunately negative experience. The food was passable, but the filthy restrooms and snapping staff were awful. If anything, get sushi — shabu shabu is weak

sushi is fine here. some 80s music which i enjoyed when dinning there. highly suggest to light up the place, otherwise it just feels too dim for a restaurant

From the street, Swish looks like a hole in the wall. Looks aside, the food is high-​quality, the service is warm and accommodating and the prices are right. Our table enjoyed sushi (the quality and price of which were unmatched) and shabu-​shabu. Everyone’s wishes (extra sauces, extra ginger, etc.) were accommodated and a wonderful meal was had by all.

Wandering around West 4^th Street on a Saturday evening, we stopped in to Swish Café for a delicious bite of sushi.
I got the Swish Roll, great deal for only $ 9.
Rusty got something with eel, and it tasty very fishy. I know what you’re saying, «Carol, you’re eating raw fish… what do you expect it to taste like?»
But the beauty of fresh sushi is that it should not taste/​smell overwhelmingly fishy. But hey, that was a few days ago and I still don’t have food poisoning, so I guess I am good?
That being said, I don’t like places that keep me guessing. So this place only gets two stars. Sorry Shabu Shabu. And your tables were schticky. Me no like.

Had to write and update given my recent discovery: they will deliver shabu shabu! It’s not the best shabu (or even close) but I was pretty ecstatic to have a pot of broth, sliced prime beef, and a huge bunch of enoki mushrooms/​noodles/​veggies just teleport to my front door one Sunday afternoon when I was too lazy (and hungover) to mobilize. Yessssss.

Garbage, don’t go here

Seems like a Japanese restaurant? just avg…

Disastrous. First, the table I was seated at was completely wet, with little puddles all over the place. Second, it was really hard getting the servers’ attention. Third, the food was more than sub par. My Alaskan roll literally disintegrated in my mouth. I’m not even sure if that was real fish. My friend’s rice dish wasn’t good either. Really nothing about this «Japanese» restaurant is Japanese at all. They give 10% discounts to NYU students but I definitely won’t be coming here again.

I came here expecting to finally really get into the swing of consuming sushi. I have heard only good, amazing glowing reviews about the sushi here, so I knew this was the best, most affordable, place to eat sushi.
I ended up wimping out, however, and going for the teriyaki chicken. WORST DECISION EVER. My stomach did not forgive me for 2 days afterwards. The teriyaki tasted more like the udon noodle it advertised than the teriyaki sauce. It was so salty, I thought I would explode from all the water I was gulping down.
My friend, the ever sophisticated and veteran sushi devourer, went with the gay roll. At a quick glance, it looked like (dare I say), a penis wrapped up in rice. I was pretty ehh about trying to down a bite of it because it had shrimp tempura in the middle, and caviar on top (background: I normally don’t eat shrimp unless it is unrecognizable, and I have never eaten caviar). But for reals, even though it took me a straight minute to eat one bite, it was AMAZING. The caviar on top gave a gentle kick to the perfectly crunchy shrimp. The rice was not sticky at all. It was utterly, a gay, happy experience for me.
Best yet, it was mad cheap. Although I do regret paying for the teriyaki dish. I should have just occupied the restaurant’s bathroom for a copious amount of time to show the chef/​management how utterly horrible the dish was.
I am fully confident that upon returning to shabu shabu (I know I will), the rating will increase.
Lesson: Shoulda gone with the gay roll.

I went here on a date and was really underwhelmed by the food (not the company).
I don’t even eat fish sushi, and I was still underwhelmed. Avocado cucumber rolls weren’t even on the menu, and I had to beg them to make them for me. The sweet potato rolls were dry and didn’t have any of the delicious sweet sauce that is usually drizzled over them.
Lame.

I have two words for this establishment: ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS.
I read the Unilocal reviews before I went and they were pretty bad. However, I like to see HOW BAD the place actually is. I thought to myself «come on, you just dip meat/​seafood in broth… how bad can it be?» It was raining out and pretty windy, which made for the perfect evening for shabu shabu. This is the closest shabu shabu place near me so I went, I ate, I cringed, then I got pissed off at how bad it really was. Shame on those who gave this place more than 1 star.
The meat: awful (and frozen)
The veggies: standard
The seafood: terrible (and frozen)
The sauces: all super salty
The maki rolls: weren’t rolled tight enough, the sushi rice wasn’t sticky enough so everything fell apart. The quality of of the fish was (can someone guess??)…ABSOLUTELY AWFUL!
Save yourself the time and money and go elsewhere.
The sad thing is that the people who work there are SUPER NICE, but that is no excuse for extremely poor food.

This place is small, seems like they have changed many owners over the past few years. I usually get their shabu special, which is for 2 people for about $ 40. They give you a HUGE assortment of veggies and a big meat plate. Their sauces are different from what I’m use to for Shabu, but they are very good. They dont have pure caps (hot drops) so definitely need to bring my own (yes, i have NO shame in my game lol). Their sushi is good for NYC, prices are decent as well.

On a Friday night, the restaurant was packed and there was 1 waitress. Felt soooo bad for her as she ran around from table to table taking orders, bringing orders out, handling food, pouring alcohol, seating people… I wish I could have helped her!!! Our table of 3 felt so bad that we didn’t vocalize how SLOW the service was. Honestly, it was NOT the waitress’s fault!!! They need to hire more people, the amount of work this lady did was almost a joke, but as a customer, the slowness of the service was unacceptable.
Shabu Shabu was very basic was good — I like the sa cha sauce. it suited my taiwanese taste buds very well. :-P Please note, there is NO sauce bar here… just soy sauce and sa cha sauce (which i always thought was an acquired taste).
Oh and meanwhile, there was the sushi chef who did not lift a finger during the entire meal. Seems like EVERYONE got shabu shabu or cooked foods that night. And… guess what he was doing while the poor single waitress ran around and juggled 8 tables… feeding the fish in the fish tank!!! UGHT!

So far, so good! I’ve enjoyed the lunch specials. A bento box or 2 rolls of sushi come with soup and salad, all for something like $ 8. I liked the good quality meat in the chicken teriyaki bento, and enjoyed their California roll as well. I didn’t love the spicy tuna roll, which tasted too much like a concoction and not enough like fresh fish. Safe bet for a good, cheap lunch.

Approximately an hour after I’ve eaten here, I get really weird, uncomfortable sensations in my stomach. Happens every time. Probably some of the worst sushi I’ve ever had. All of it: the spicy tuna, salmon, and eel. It makes the sushi from Whole Foods taste like it came from Nobu.
It’s a good deal for impoverished NYU students though, especially during lunch. After classes, be prepared for the sake bombing marathons (possibly sponsored by one of the fraternities) that take place.

We originally planned on having the shabu shabu here, but Mama didn’t raise no fool.
I don’t shabu shabu outside of Flushing, Queens or better yet, HOME. So sushi it was. And I have to say, it was pretty unremarkable– that’s what my spicy salmon and eel rolls were. I decided to experiment and get a sweet potato roll. Mang, it was like pulling teeth trying to finish up half a dozen bland & starchy rolls. I won’t be returning.

The service here was excellent, if I may say so, even with a rowdy group of 20+ college students, they still managed to serve us quickly and efficiently.
The hotpot itself wasn’t too spectacular with the sauces — watch out, the soy sauce they bring out is laced with spicy peppers! — and the sauce-​making up at the Swish uptown near Columbia is better. But the portions were generous, and there were enough vegetables to cover for the lack of sauce choices (which is about ½ of hotpot). The soup — decent, although nothing really special thrown in the dashi. Chose the beef and the seafood minipots, nice to get a little pot of your own, and the lips of the pots in the table weren’t too high — although the chairs were a bit low for the shorter people in the group.
Yasai gyoza — good, although not very plentiful with the veggies inside, more like a mush.
Green tea — hot and brewed well, here the machta was excellent.
Lots of college students doing sake bombs. Interesting, to say the least. Noisy, and can get crowded later on, but not a bad place at all to grab a quick bit of shabu shabu.