shabu shabu

sunday night the cousins & significant others went out for dinner at shabu shabu for dave's birthday celebration.

was quite good. their mocktails were awesome, loved the strawberry one and definitely value for money on both food and drink. although they could've done with some more noodles... i think everyone would agree with me on that one :)

the concept of shabu shabu is a japanese style hot pot.
you choose your soup base and your dipping sauce, and a conveyor belt holds individual serves of food such as noodles, prawns, various meets, vegies etc.
you choose what you would like & put it in your boiling soup in front of you. it's a buffet so we stuffed ourselves full of all sorts of goodies.

i felt sorry for the people sitting next to trang, because we were such a large group we would pass messages down like "noodles coming!" - "anyone want prawns?" LOL.
when the noodles started getting scarce it was every man for himself. but being family we all made sure everyone got a share, leaving none for the couple beside trang.

we're a noisy bunch. and being a japanese place, they're a bit conservative and the other patrons looked at us strangely like we were apes in a century old library... it didn't affect any of us though. :P

after shabu shabu we headed to max brennar melbourne central which disappointed us to a tee.
i'm used to highpoint max brennar so i'm fine with going up and ordering and service to the table.
melbourne central takes your order and brings you service. you think this would be awesome. but we had to keep getting up and asking where our order was.
frustrating much?
in the end all the cousins were so annoyed we short changed them and skipped out. that's what you get for taking 20 minutes for a damn chocolate lick (which is just a pot of melted chocolate!).

overall the good outweighed the bad and as usually embarrassing stories were told. good to have the group out again, it's been a while =]

*note: victor and liz were both preoccupied with the food to take photos, although theie is no photographical evidence of their presence, i do remember them dressing quite sharp because mizzmai told them so :D*

the alcoholics of the group