Watami Shabu Shabu and Ramen Bistro

I have yet to try the shabu shabu here (usually head to Japantown for that), but I have gotten their ramen a couple of times now. On this most recent venture, ordered their Watami Ramen with the Spicy Miso broth and regular noodles, and the Fried Soft Shell Crab appeitzer to split.
The first thing that struck me was that this bowl was ridiculously big. Like, «omg-​this-​giant-​ass-​bowl-​of-​ramen-​is-​going-​to-​tear-​a-​hole-​in-​my-​stomach» big. I saw on the menu that the order went for $ 11, and I can certainly see why. Three pieces of wonton, three pieces of roast pork, house spare rib, egg, noodles, seaweed, fishcake, bean sprouts, bamboo, and green onion. Man, regardless of anything else, it’s certainly hearty, warm, and filling. So filling, it’s going to hurt you in fact. Taste-​wise though, it left me a little wanting. The broth isn’t as flavorful as I would like, especially for a spicy miso broth. It’s almost as if the flavors are diluted and lost in that giant portion of food.
As for the Soft Shell Crab, it was a decently sized crab (chopped up, but arranged so you can get an idea as to how big it was) and it wasn’t heavily fried. However, the one thing I certainly didn’t care for as that while it was chopped up, the legs on each side were left attached to the torso as two big pieces. This would make it pretty difficult to share beyond two people, and it was slightly awkward to eat (no where to put the rest when you take only a bite).
Certainly, generous portions they don’t cheat you on for the money, but nothing that will blow you away flavor wise. However, makes me wonder how much they give you for the shabu shabu…

Its been a year since I last visited this place. What the hell happened? Their menu looks different and the service is horrible!
I came here with my co-​worker and ordered their «home made» ramen w/​chicken kaarage ($ 5.50). The ramen DID NOT taste home made at all! The kaarage was blah. The waitress made a mistake and brought out some chicken katsu. Should have kept *that* instead. The spicy miso soup was okay. But its nothing special. However, their portions are huge!
I also came here 2 weeks ago and ordered their unagi ($ 5.50). It was not very good. It came with salad and some tempura. I did not enjoy it at all. The salad was sooo gross O-​well. At least it was cheap.
The only thing I like about this place are their cheap prices. Everything on their lunch menu was $ 5.50 (Well, most of the items). Service here is horrible! The waitress didn’t even bother to seat us. She just told us to sit anywhere. Didn’t even give us menus. We had to steal it from another table. Forgot to give us utensils and lastly, she messed up on my order.
I don’t like giving bad reviews… But sorry, I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone.
1.5 stars

Was taken here for lunch by my big lil brother who whom I hardly get to see these days. I was pleasantly surprised by not only the fact that they had my favorite spicy miso broth but also that they were really cheap, at around $ 6 bucks a bowl. They also include the egg and naruto as well as scallions. Their pretty decent as far as the Ramen goes and are a great place to stop in for lunch when on a budget. Last month I also took my hubby here and he loved it as well. Will definitely be back sometime. Stick with lunch though as dinner can get expensive.
FYI: Street parking can be hard to come by so I would avoid weekends if possible or come in earlier.

I’m going to hold back in this review and give Watami another try. I really only got half the deal.
I came here with my mom because we were looking to try out some new joints that had opened there doors since I had been at college. There’s not really much to this place, nice and simple decorations on the inside. Ornate, but kind of typical Asian restaurant. I’m no interior designer, but I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.
In terms of the food, they give you a lot for a little. When we came, they were having a $ 5.50 on any bowl of ramen, with your choice of egg noodles or home made ramen. Tip: go with the home made. The egg noodles look like the straight up boiled the finest Maruchan packages they could find. Hey, I won’t hate, but there’s no point in paying $ 5.50 for something you can heat up in your dorm room right? I got the spicy miso broth with salmon, while my mom chose the pork broth with spareribs.
Needless to say, my mother’s dish got the best of mine and had me leaning over quite a few number of times. It comes with the imitation squid, hardboiled eggs and some veggies if I remember correctly. The ramen is good for the price and you won’t have to fight for the attention of your server if you come during lunch. Tasty and warming on a overcast San Francisco afternoon. Yummy

One failed club night, my friend suggested that we come to her cousin’s place Watami, to just drink and chill. Since then, Watami has been one of our usual places to go if we leave clubs early, or for another one of those kick back nights.
I’m not a big fan of sake alone, but I love their lychee sake-​tini and if its one of those nights… sake bombs! Before I have only had some of their appetizer items and tonkatsu ramen. I LOVE their tonkatsu ramen. Its a pork based broth with chicken katsu (breaded chicken) with egg and some other things. The soup is soooooo good! The fresh oyster that they have here are very sweet and fresh as well.
This past July, my friend celebrated her 23^rd dinner here. We got the all you can eat shabu shabu and all you can drink sake (and beer too supposedly but we stuck to sake) for around $ 35 dollars. I’m not sure what broth we got because our friend ordered it but we added some shots of sake which I personally think made it better. We stuck to just getting beef and lamb, the only two meats I think are good for shabu shabu. Pork and chicken gets too dried out. I also really like the noodles that come with it.
Even though there was only 2 girls working that night with our big ass party and many other parties, they were really quick with getting us our meats, filling up the broth, bringing out drinks, etc. Besides the only thing that I don’t like which is the allowed smoking in the restaurant, I would recommend this place to anyone.

I came here last Saturday because it was taking way too long to get a table for dim sum at HK Lounge, so we thought we’d try the place next store. Big mistake…
I ordered the Chicken Karaaga Ramen with the Tonkatsu soup. The chicken was fried so long that it looked like chicken jerky and there was barely any meat on it. As for their ramen, it’s homemade, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. I thought it was a little undercooked, so I purposely let it sit a little longer. It still didn’t help. Their soup was forgettable probably won’t come back.

I wanted to go to Katana-​Ya, but my friend’s place was just a few blocks from Watami, so we went here instead.
I was happy that they have 2 decent-​sized TVs in the joint because the Lakers-​Rockets game was going on at the time. The waitress was extremely friendly, but when I asked her who she was rooting for, she hesitantly said, «Lakers.» She should’ve known better. MINUS ONE. I will not tolerate anyone rooting for the most bitchmade player in the league that is known as K###. Seriously, if he wasn’t such an asshole and a cheapshot artist, he’d probably be one of my favorite players in the league despite being my Warriors’ rival. Whatever, the waitress was still nice.
Oh yeah, I ordered the Spicy Miso Ramen with sliced pork. The miso was spicy indeed and definitely was the star of the dish. The noodles were MEH — a little too chewy for my tastes. The pork was way too fatty, but the meat that was in it was delicious and tender.
So-​so ramen.
I will end this review with a fun fact:
People yell out «Kobe!» when they shoot the J. Kobe yells out «Morrow!»

2 Stars is being SUPER generous!
Since Kabuto was packed, this was an alternate choice. We came here on a Saturday night at around 8:45 PM. There were about 2 large parties there, but we were promptly seated.
FOOD:
*Fried fish cake: Gross! It was chewy, hard, and overcooked. It tasted like dried cuttlefish; like the packaged ones from Asian markets.
*Ribeye/​Lamb Shabu Shabu: Ehhh, it was ok. We got the miso broth which didn’t have much flavor to it. It tasted water-​down. It came with several pieces of tofu, some ramen, mushrooms, and veggies.
DRINKS: Sake Flights — All 6 of them tasted watered down.
SERVICE: Our waitress was completely clueless and slow. We had to ask her 4 times where our sake flights were which came after our food! Also, she forgot to turn on our burner, so the whole time we were cooking our food in luke warm broth.
Never again…

I was on a search to find good shabu shabu places in SF and tried this place out. Unfortunately, I was fooled by the nice appearance of the place. Learn from my mistake!
I can’t speak for the ramen, but the shabu wasn’t up to par for a place that apparently specializes in it. If you can’t tell the difference between ponzu sauce and somen sauce, you probably aren’t in tune with real Japanese food so this place might not be so bad for you. I was dipping my meat in somen sauce, what the hell!
Service was attentive but maybe too much so. There was only one other table in use in the restaurant, yet the servers kept hovering within a few feet of us. No no.

I’ve gone here way too many times to leave it at a 3 star. They have the traditional noodles here now — and still not the most authentic, but their tonkatsu broth is so freakin good. Especially for the price, which they’ve lowered.
The waitress here is always really nice too. It’s a reliable place in the neighborhood to get a big bowl of noodle soup on a cold day.

Three words… spicy miso ramen.
I love it here! I’ve never tried any of the other flavors they have and probably will never even stray from the spicy miso ramen. If you’ve ever had Santa Ramen in San Mateo this is the one flavor they are missing! Glad I decided to come here after wandering around Geary deciding between the many restaurants.

I came here for ramen. The spicy miso broth was not spicy at all. The chashu was not as tender as I had hoped — if I have to exert any type of force at all to chew the pork, then it’s not tender enough. Noodle to soup ratio was off. Overall, mediocre at best. Nothing special.

Note to self: give a bad restaurant a second chance.
My hubby and I went into Watami after a rather bad experience last time because we wanted to give this place another chance. This time, i didn’t order the ramen. I got the Shabu shabu and ordered the Beef combination which came with 10 slices of beef, a veggie platter, ramen noodles, and ice cream. I got the Pork Bone soup, which was really good — much better than the choices Shabu House has.
Everything was delicious. What I really liked was that although I was the only person who ordered Shabu shabu (my hubby ordered ramen noodles), they still prepared the stove, the soup, all the fixings for just 1 person. It’s a lot of work to get all the stuff out for 1 person. The best thing — the price was only $ 13.95!!! This is about $ 5 cheaper than Shabu House. Although I still love Shabu House, this is my new favorite. The taste is comparable but it’s A WHOLE LOT CHEAPER!
i’ll come back to eat Shabu Shabu here…

Came here for lunch today with three of my friends. These are the same friends that HATED this place with a passion. When I describe hate… it doesn’t really capture how they truely feel. One friend… said to me, the last time we ate there, that he can make better ramen at home. Back then… I actually agreed with them.
Now…they are probably one of the better ramen houses out there. They just had so much bad rap in the past that it was hard for them to recover. Especially in San Francisco. My motto is this. You serve a good lunch to someone… they might tell one friend. You serve a bad lunch to someone… they will tell the whole world about how bad it was. You serve a bad lunch to a Unilocaler… you probably be in a world of hurt.
Will have to try the shabu shabu next time.

I know that this place gets lots of «up» and «down» reviews, and after eating here a 2^nd time, I’m so happy I get to give them an «up» one.
Let me preface this by saying that I love noodles. A lot. The first time I came here, was right after they had opened, and I think they were still working the kinks out in their soups and dishes. It was OK, but I wasn’t totally blown away. My friend wasn’t really all that impressed either, but he’s very lackadasical about these types of things. I had gone, had noodles, and was not very excited to come back.
Now, 2^nd visit was very nice, which is probably also due to the fact that my friend is friends with the owner. The food came out nice and quickly and I was very pleased with my Ramen. The chicken seemed really fresh, and my broth was tasty. The owner was very VERY generous with our drinks, and allowed us to indulge in our low-​key birthday shenanigans.
The only downside to this place is they don’t have the best waitstaff yet. The girl seemed to be very disinterested in us, and was sloppy about delivering our orders, and seemed almost put-​upon to bring out refills for the all-​you-​can-​eat shabu shabu crowd. Hopefully, that will change as Watami continues to settle into its pace. I will say that I’m excited to go back though.

They have improved greatly since the last time I was here. While having drinks with Jason G. at Mckenzies he suggested we go to Watami to give the ramen another shot…
I dont exactly remember the names of the ramen we ordered but heres the jist of everything…
Tonkatsu was crunchy and tender, some places usually got the crunch but get stuck with it being tough.
The ramen was a lot better, stick with the traditional guys. It didnt fall apart, had good consistency. I’ve had both their homemade and their traditonal and just stick with the traditional. Im guessing the homemade wasnt really up to par for my tastebuds is well becaues its tooo healthy hahaha
The toppings they include, like the cha-​shu was good, the pork ribs was good, their bamboo shoots were good. Overall I was very happy with how things turned out.
After speaking to Ton the owner of this joint, he basically explained that in the beginning he had hired a chef that really didnt get a rats ass about the quality of the food, just that doing enough was enough. So Ton tossed that suck ass chef out and started to fix things up again.
I have to admit it was an improvement. Also this place is open pretty late so if your looking for a bowl of ramen during the late hours of 12 or so, you should drop on by.
o yea, Melanie was our oh so wonderful server, very sweet girl. Polly was nice too… her name was Polly right?

I don’t think the proprietors of this restaurant actually care about the food they serve. It tastes that bad.
The shoyu ramen’s broth wasn’t even clear. It looked closer to a miso broth, which told me the soup wasn’t really made with shoyu but with some freeze-​dried powder. The «home made» noodles were undercooked, flavorless, and actually fell apart in the soup. Even worse, the chashu didn’t look like chashu – it was more like a circular ‘ring’ of meat. How hard is it to boil pork, really?
The curry tonkatsu had its fair share of problems. To start, they serve it in a bowl with the sauce poured all over the katsu, which makes it soggy (thus negating any reason for ordering it with tonkatsu). I didn’t find a single piece of the katsu where the skin didn’t fall off the meat, and they even managed to suck at rice.
The green tea ice cream was what really did it for me: it was painfully obvious that it was old, had melted, and had been refrozen. I think it actually takes effort to serve ice cream that tastes worse than the kind that comes out of my own freezer after 8 months of neglect.
This bears repeating: the owners of this place don’t really care about the food that they serve. Everything was symptomatic of lack of effort. I honestly feel I’m doing them a favor by writing them a bad review – it’ll hopefully lead them to close down sooner and move on to something they actually care about or are good at.
Some of these reviews HAVE to be written by the owner’s friends or family, I swear. Five stars? Approaching the best ramen in the city? Come clean, please.

The real adventure was eating here with several south americans where the concept of shabu shabu really boiled down to «so you just boil your meat?» Right … doesn’t sound as appetizing when it’s described that way is it?
The other interesting part was pretending to be drunk so the BF of my friend wouldn’t know that she got drunk in the 30 minutes since she last spoke with him.
It’s weird that they call this a Shabu shabu place when there is only 1 option for a plate of meat — 10 slices (though they were hearty generous slices). The other ramen dishes and won tons soups and pot stickers were all average. Nothing terrible, but hardly memorable.
Primarily the reason I probably will not return is that they were stingy with their sauces. Everyone got the ponzu sauce for the dipping, but I had to ask for the miso sauce … in which case they only brought me 1 small dish though I’m glad of it because it tasted stale and terrible.

I’m laughing so hard @ Nobu K’s review, I don’t think I can write my own.
I had the kimchee ramen in miso. The kimchee was okay (most likely the canned kind, duh) and the broth was lacking cause it needs MSG
YES I EAT MSG OKAY.
ANYWAY. They give you an option of having wheat noodles or «traditional» ramen. Wheat noodles? Who the hell tries to go healthy when you’re out eating RAMEN for christ’s sake? GIMMIE THE TRADITIONAL!
Anyways. They give you a pretty big serving of noodles — me likey.
Also had the jellyfish appetizer, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It tastes like seaweed salad.

The sign outside said ramen & shabu shabu, so I went in expecting to have those options. But the owner said that shabu shabu is currently only available during dinner (starts @5pm), so I decided to try their ramen. I guess that they expect most of their customers to come for dinner. BTW, Shabu House is located on the next block (near 16^th Ave.) and they offer shabu shabu for both lunch and dinner.
Everything inside the restaurant is dark (walls, counter, tables & chairs), and they have 3 large LCD screens.
Their menu includes appetizers, ramen, curry rice, and a few salads. Currently the beverage options are limited (soda, OJ, tea). I ordered the fish cake appetizer and a chasu ramen (shoyu broth). Like in some ramen places you get to choose the type of broth you want: tonkotsu, miso, spicy miso, and shoyu. The restaurant makes their own noodles, so it has a homemade look and is thicker than the typical ramen we all know. The shoyu broth tasted very good.
The chasu pork has been made into a roll and then sliced, so that every piece has a significant amount of melt in your mouth fat. It’s very tasty and I liked it, but I thought I should mention it, just in case you expect to have more meat on your chasu pork.
The amount of food was satisfying, but you can get a bowl of ramen that is twice the size at most other places (Hotei, etc.) for a similar price.
I’ll revise the review when I try their Shabu Shabu.