Shabu-Shabu (1966)

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Happiness pervades even the playful decor at East Chinatown's Happy Shabu Shabu.
(photo: Cary Conover) Happy Shabu Shabu
54 Canal Street
212-226-8868
Open daily noon to midnight
Major credit cards. Wheelchair accessible with assistance.
If you don't have a great meal at Happy Shabu Shabu, it's your own fault—you do all the cooking at the city's latest outpost of Japanese nabemono, in which guests swish thin-sliced morsels of food in a bubbling pot. Traditionally limited to beef, shabu shabu became popular in the 19th century soon after the cow was introduced to Japan. Happy Shabu Shabu is not Japanese, however. It's a Chinese adaptation, shining like a beacon on the dark stretch of Canal Street east of the Manhattan Bridge.

   OED has "shabu shabu" from 1970...OT: I had a friend who annoyingly would sing "shboom shboom."

   10 March 1966, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 22:
   ...shabu-shabu, a guest-participation dish made with beef or pork and vegetables;...
(Recipe follows--ed.)

   4 January 1970, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. SM322:
   The dish the Japanese call shabu-shabu is sometimes called oriental fondue in this country.  It consists of wafer-thin slices of beef (instead of chunks, as in an occidental meat fondue) cooked briefly in a boiling liquid and dipped into a savory sauce.  (...)  Shabu-shabu is onomatopoeic; it imitates the sound of chopsticks as they swirl in the broth.