So the final product turned out halfway decent!

After a few awkwardly printed shirts, we finally came out with something kinda ok.

Purple, Charcoal, and our kinda version of pink.

Teal & Purple.

The crew.

Signage!! DirecTV!!! Its all coming together!! Lakers vs Spurs Tonight @ CalShabuSM!!

We’ve been dying to put some sort of media in our place, and also wanted play the Laker games amongst others. There were a few objectives in this project, namely stealthiness and subtlety. We’ve always hated restaurants which lost their ambience to becoming a quasi sports bars. We’re not hating on sports bars, just don’t want to lose our restaurant to the boob tube.

The biggest challenges for us were cost and placement of televisions to get the maximum coverage, but we also wanted to make it a point of keeping the tv’s out of the main focal point. We still want to maintain our love for food, drink, and conversation, but didn’t want to overpower the space by the 6 digital screens we had scattered throughout.

It was of utmost importance that we hid the tv’s from the street, but allowed the seated customers to look up and catch the games if they wanted, but at the same time they didn’t have to if they didn’t want to. We even went so far as to recess and angle one of the tv’s which had the toughest viewing angle.

Due to the serpentine nature of our bar layout, the winding curves make equal visibility very difficult. Virtually impossible might be more accurate. Each tv can cover a mixumum of 4-7 people, and with 47 seats, thats alot of tv’s needed. There’s been too much repetition of the word tv in this post.

Our man Geo took care of the drywall and knocked out this custom tv nook in one all night session.

So from this point forward, COME WATCH THE GAME, DRINK SOME BEER, AND EAT SOME SHABU!!!!!

Go Lakers!!

New Tees for the girls!!

Something we’ve always wanted to do is make our own tees. We’ve gone through numerous print shops, which have been great to us, but experimentation costs money. So with what would have cost us a couple of runs worth of shirt printing, we decided to use Len’s press, and bought ourselves some screens, inks, and a flash heater. We were all set to becoming big tee shirt printers!!!

We started with tidying up the garage a bit, and then laid our our inks on our makeshift table. Too many chemicals!! After running a bunch of shirts, we decided that we would soon be swapping our plastisol ink for more environmentally friendly water based eco-inks. But for now we really like the vibrance that only plastisol can bring, so we’ll knock out a few more to keep our servers clothed, and hopefully sell a few too.

Since we needed a light safe place to store our unexposed screens, I decided to build a little makeshift storage darkroom out of left over pvc pipe I’d had laying around for the last 4 years from my now completed sprinkler project. I was so excited to have found a use for my clutter!!! We taped a bunch of rosin paper around it, and voila!!! We had ourselves a somewhat fragile darkroom.

We were finally ready to start printing, well almost. We finished applying our photo emulsion to the screens, cured them in our little light safe area, and were finally ready to expose them. Once exposed, we setup our press, and were ecstatic to print our first tee ever!!

Everything looked in place and kind of professional! At least thats what we wanted to tell ourselves.

We mix our inks, because out of the tub colors were just not for us. Except for the teal once we used it, but you’ll see that later.

Anthony making our signature “shabu charcoal”.

I finally get to lay one out. Hopefully these all turn out good!!!

If you still don’t know where we’re located, our sign is finally up!

So, after uhh…. 5 months?? Give or take maybe a month or 2… We finally have our sign!!!! But wait, to continue our slew of difficulties, the sign may look complete… but upon closer inspection, problems abound. Lets look at the good first.

So it started out promising, and it was looking pretty slick.

Onto the details. Do you see anything wrong with the pic below?

If you noticed the little pinholes of light to the right of the signage… they’re actually called weepholes, and are meant to be facing downward so that the excess rainwater can drain out of the lettering. Since we never intended our sign to be oriented sideways, this was simply an unacceptable oversight. Lets see what the signage company does to right the wrong.

And, on the opposite side of the weepholes, are these ugly, mandatory UL stickers, which are only allowed to be moved or removed by the fabricator, or we get fined some silly amount of money. The stickers and sharpie writing doesn’t really go with our motif. Its been another 2 weeks now since the sign has been installed, and still no corrections from the signage company. We’re still waiting………..

Omaka Springs and Kaiken: Our new Sauvignon Blanc and Malbec!

So, we’re not just beer and sake lovers, but we know we have an obligation to our wine loving crowd as well. These are the first additions to our wine list. We’ve been solicited by so many wine distributors and manufacturers, but almost every time, we’re met with a lackluster tasting, and nothing of significant impression.

This time around was a bit different. Fred, one of our newest wine reps is actually a Level 3 sommelier, so we took his advice, and tried what he pulled out of his little travel tote bag. The standouts amongst the contenders were the Omaka Estates Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and the Kaiken Malbec from Argentina.

The Omaka was an unexpected white. A little fuller than what we’d expect a sauv blanc to be, but thats part of the beauty of it. Easy to drink, but with a bit of complexity which makes each sip that much more enjoyable. This wine is actually not 100% sauv banc, but blended with 6.2% Semillon which is a relatively new grape varietal in the New Zealand wine region, but has long been used by California winemakers to blend into the sauv blancs. Yum!

Onto the Kaiken Malbec, which is an amazingly drinkable yet velvety wine. Strong blackberry notes and not too much acidity. This pairs so well with shabu. We felt very strongly that we should be trying to introduce new and unconventional wines to pair with shabu dining. Wine is such a compliment to food, and can truly elevate the dining experience. Asian food however, are so often overlooked for wine pairings. The Kaiken with the beef, simply delivers!

Recycled the Old, Printed the New… Menus are finally here!

If you haven’t noticed, our original menus have finally met their day, but we knew this day would come. Our new menus and table cards finally came in after all of our little tweaks had been made. The original ones were actually printed on the incorrect paper. The original paper stock we had selected did not come in, so our printer ended up printing the actual pattern of texture onto a plain white stock, giving it the greenish/stone tone in the pic below.

The new ones are printed on recycled stock, and Costa Mesa and Fountain Valley will be getting their’s soon once we update a few things. Way better than our 1st run. So excited that we won’t have to see any more ponzu stained menus!

Patrick Mordaunt @ Formula Drift 2012!! The Cal Shabu fam can drive!!

One of our newest shabu buddies is Patrick Mordaunt, young drifter extraordinaire!! He’s baby-faced but a terror on the track, and at this past weekend’s annual Long Beach Formula Drift event, he slid his way into the top 32.

At only 21 tender years of age, this dude has been drifting since before he’s had a license, and just got picked up by APEXi to pilot their SC430. Its a trip to meet such a young guy who’s been in the industry since he was barely growing out of matchbox cars.

If you guys haven’t been been to a drift event, its worth a visit if you love cars. Since I can’t afford a custom V8 drifting beast, nor do I have the driving skills to keep other drivers safe while on the road with me, I settled for a slightly smaller version for my first drifting experience.

This is our rendition of what our Superdry/CalShabu sponsored 350Z drift car would look like. 

Its the little things that make us giddy!!

As its always been our nature to search for all the little details, we decided to address the ugly traditional “Please wait to be seated” signs which we’re so used to seeing attached to those clunky gold swivel bases that look like they belong in an 80′s hotel lobby.  Our version seemed well thought out, but we may have fallen a little short.

 

 

 

We weren’t sure how any of this would turn out, but were extremely hopeful that our novel idea would inevitably be one of the “biggest” little accomplishments to date.

 

 

 

 

Subtle, but maybe a bit too subtle?? It seems that many customers are not drawn to stare at the floor as they first enter the space, but if they were, and a few of you guys are super observant, they would see our rendition of the sign, and follow our little text line towards the podium and ultimately the sign-in sheet.

So far, this kind of seems to work. Better than the 80′s hotel lobby velvet rope holders!