It is not right in the heart of Ginza, but roughly across from Yurakucho Station there is a Kagoshima kurobuta (black pork) shabu-shabu specialist called Ichiniisan. Its Tabelog score is nothing special, but judging by the long lunchtime queue, the lunch at around 1,500 yen must be great value. This day, though, I ordered the house specialty, the black pork shabu-shabu.
The broth
Shabu-shabu tastes pretty much the same when you make it at home, so there is not much reason to go out for it. Oddly enough, I had hardly ever eaten shabu-shabu in Korea, but I ended up eating a lot of it while living in Japan. Still, being a specialist, they served a rather distinctive broth.
The pork
The quality of the meat is excellent. It is visibly quite fatty, so it is a little rich, but eaten with the sauce and vegetables it was delicious.
The sauce
Unusually, the dipping sauce was soba tsuyu. It went surprisingly well.
Ginger
Add it to taste.
Soba
Usually the shime at the end of shabu-shabu is udon or rice porridge, but here, unusually, it was soba. I wondered if this is the Kagoshima style.
Shaved ice (shirokuma)
I ordered this for dessert. Moving somewhere else to eat it felt like too much hassle.. I ordered the small shirokuma shaved ice, and it was still a fair amount..
The shabu-shabu here is not exactly cheap, but the taste lives up to the price. Very Ginza.
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