Cal Shabu Santa Monica on the lookout for additional team members!

As we continue to wait for our signage, which seems to be taking a lifetime, we find ourselves looking for a few more team members to join the crew. The general pace of business is gradually steadying itself, despite the fact that our sign-less frontage can be a bit tough to spot on a drive by. Since we still have numerous first-time customers walking by our sign-lessness for months before stepping in, we’re hoping the signage truly has something to do with our real level of exposure in the local community.

Before we look to good ol Craigslist, we were hoping to find a few existing Shabu lovers who know what we’re all about, and have some time to commit to our growth efforts. If you or anyone else you know is interested, please don’t hesitate to download our application from our website (www.calshabu.com) or click on the “apply for a position” above and email us to set up a time to come by for an interview. Feel free to include your resume in the email as well.

We are looking for, of course the basic cliche upbeat, energetic, attentive, and professional team members, but we’re actually serious about these qualities. One of our biggest pet peeves is when any servers fail to deliver the same level of service which any of us would find satisfactory eating out ourselves. We know you guys are out there, so hopefully you’ll find us sooner than later. Contact us anytime at calshabusm@gmail.com. We’ve left you all with a bit of Canadian humor, or honesty, since we hate picture-less posts.

 

Hitachino Nest White Ale on DRAFT!!!!!! @CalShabu Santa Monica!!

We’re so excited, if you couldn’t already tell, to get our very first keg of liquid gold called Hitachino Nest White Ale!! For those who are familiar, not much more needs to be said. But for the inquisitive ones, how can a $10 12oz pour be considered reasonable????? Lets go into this in a bit more detail:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hitachino is one of Japan’s few craft brews, hailing from the Kiuchi Brewery in Japan, which was originally established in 1823 as a sake brewery. It wasn’t until 1996 that the brewery unleashed their hand-crafted White on the world, winning gold medals and awards wherever they went. In 2000, they finally entered the US market, and still a decade later, their product is still high quality, still in high demand, and still produced in limited quantities. This in a nutshell is why we feel so fortunate to get our hands on one of the few kegs in socal. We greedily tried to buy the last remaining 2 kegs from the distributor, but were denied, and told that the few kegs were always allocated, and we were lucky to even get this one.

We’re serving it in a stemless wine glass, and it pours with a beautiful light head, with a citrusy aroma that will tingle your senses. We’ll try and keep this one in stock as long as we can, but jump on it while you can.

If you want to read more about this beer, check out:

www.beeradvocate.com

Cheers!

A little gangsta in shabu…

If you haven’t seen our resident gangsta bike “el vatos locos”, it makes us laugh….

It made us laugh even more when we tried to ride it!!

Since its Mark’s bike, he naturally looks like a fitting rider. Nothing out of the ordinary in Santa Monica. Asian dude on a lowrider bike.. just a normal SM day…

Briana kinda looks at home, mainly because they’re a perfect size fit.

Business casual seems a bit out of place…  but again its Santa Monica… lets ride down to the boardwalk…

Meg and Dia Frampton at Cal Shabu SM!

The Frampton sisters and the crew stopped by for a bite before their tour!! Best of luck to all of you guys!!

We are open Today MLK Day!!

Please stop by and see us soon. For those who are wondering, we are open regular hours today. Signage is coming as well, but for the meantime, we know we’re a bit hard to find. Look for our open sign, orange chairs, wood awning, or big gray pillars.

More Beer!!! More Sake!!! More Happy Hours!!

We finally replaced a few of our beers for some new yummy goodness.

We’re going to be swapping out the Stella for something else this week, and we just got our Hoegaarden, Widmer Hef, Fat Tire, and the Deschutes Black Butte is awesome! Malty, chocolatey silk.

Our HAPPY HOURS again are:

M-F: 5-8pm

Wed: All Day!

Sat/Sun: All Lunch!

$3 hot sake and dollar off our already cheap beers.

New Art and Art show coming to Cal Shabu SM!! New Year, New Art!!

Happy New Years to All, and a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us at Cal Shabu SM and kept us going since our opening, not so long ago! You guys have been the greatest! Moving onto the new year, we want to keep providing new art to view. Here is a preview of our newest piece going up in a couple days done by Brian Lee from HoldUp Art. Can’t wait!!!! Reminds me of chitty chitty bang bang on acid…

We’re also tentatively having an artists dinner evening on Sunday January 15th, where you can join us for dinner as usual, and check out the new art, as well as meet some of the artists. Keep following for updates. We’ll keep the blog posted as our dates solidify. Hope to see you soon, have a great start to the New Year, and we’ll see you at shabu!

New Years Eve 2012 @ Cal Shabu Santa Monica!

I guess its official, we’re spending our NYE slinging meat and drinks! We’ll open almost normal business hours:

Lunch 11:30 – 2:00 and Dinner we’ll open limited hours from 5:00 – 8:00 which will lead into our New Years Bash.

Cal Shabu loyalists are always welcome to join in the festivities! Hope to see you guys soon!!

 

 

‘A’ is for Awesome food!! ‘A’ is for Alcohol!!

After a tough scrutinizing of our operation and storage setup, our health inspector finally gave us our grade! We thought we had everything handled, but it was super minor things like not having labelled our hot drop bottles that docked us points, threatening the ‘A’ that we had so longingly cared for by labelling and dating literally everything in our kitchen. If you’re going to do it, do it right! I’ll label my left hand if I have to!

HAPPY HOURS EXTENDED!!!

So its been just over 1 month of being open, and sign-less still. Our small and loyal local regulars have been so supportive and welcoming!! We really wanted to say thank you to everyone who has wandered into our sign-less establishment. Joining the neighborhood has been a great experience so far, and learning the lay of the land has been an educational process. But, we think we’ve finally started to understand a little bit, the nature of our local market: Later lunches, later Happy Hours, and lets call them lackluster Saturday and Sunday lunches for us so far. This being said, we will be amending our Happy Hours in response below.

Our signage is in the process of being approved by the city as we speak. We’re hoping that our new design will be accepted and ready for install in the next could weeks at most. Its killing us not to be seen. Countless heads have walked by, looked up for the non-existent sign, looked down, up again, then walked on in curiosity. Our newest signage addition as been our open sign, so until the city approves us, look for the ‘open’ sign.

We will most likely be closed both December 24 and 25th, and well as December 31 and New Years Day. Its not that we don’t want to be open, but the neighborhood just looks like such a ghost town during the holidays.

NEW HAPPY HOURS!!

Mon – Friday: 5:00 – 8:00

Wednesday will be Happy Hour Prices ALL DAY LONG!!!! Lunch and Dinner!!

Saturday/Sunday Happy Hour prices 11:30 – 2pm!

We’re doing a dollar off our already cheap draft beer and wine as well as $3 hot and mixed sakes! For most of you its usually been a long day, so kick back with some comfort shabu and a cold icy beer to finish off the day.

$3 Pints of Kirin, Sapporo, and Hot or Mixed Sake ($12 pitchers)

$3.50 Pints of Stella, Leffe Blonde, Widmer Hef, and imported Asahi draft ($14 pitchers)

Don’t forget to try our newest house spicy edamame!

Thank you again for bearing with us and all of our communication, signage, website, parking issues as of late. The community’s support has been amazing, and we really hope to meet you guys soon!