Congrats to all the LA Marathon finishers! Protein, Beer, and Calorie Replenishment down the st. @ California Shabu!!

Congratulations to all of those who had the guts and grit to push through the gnarly LA Marathon!! Even the first place winners had looks of pain on their faces. My buddy’s belly button moved an inch to the side for weeks after his run due to the muscle fatigue… kudos to all the finishers. We know that after a run like that, sustenance is needed!!

Maybe one day I’ll do the LA Marathon, but for now, I’ll keep slinging meat, and trying to make bigger arrows on our windows to direct people into our den of dining. And Yes, the arrows point to our front door.

 

 

See you guys soon!! Happy Sunday!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! $3 Pints, $12 Pitchers Kirin and Sapporo! All Day Long @ CalShabu Santa Monica!!

Happy St. Patty’s Day!! Pass the gloomy day with some Hot Shabu, Sake, and lots of BEER!!

Its Happy Hour All Day and All Night for St. Patty’s Day!!!

-$3 pints/$12 pitchers: Kirin/Sapporo

-$3.50 pints/$14 pitchers: Asahi/Deschuttes Black Butte

-$6 pints/$22 pitchers: Weinstephaner Vitus

-$5.50 pints/$20 pitchers: Green Flash IPA

—$3 Hot Sake, House Cold or Mixed Sakes!—

–$2.50 House Seasoned Edamame–

See you soon!!

More Dreamy Drafts @ CalShabu Santa Monica!! Chimay Tripel, Green Flash & ???

In our attempt to bring the best drafts and sakes to accompany our shabu-shabu, we’ve already gone through a pretty long list of beers to get to what we have now. The most recent beers to be dropped from our taps following Leffe Blonde, Stella and  are:

-Fat Tire-

-Hoegaarden-

-Widmer Hefeweizen-

But all to make way for the new additions, and they’re all 90+ pointers on Beer Advocate!!

+Chimay Tripel White

+Green Flash Imperial Indian Pale Ale

+(coming soon) Weinstephaner Vitus!!!!

We’re so stoked that our response on Hitachino White was so strong, and the keg is almost drained. There’s probably another couple glasses in there before we have to start our wait for the next shipment. We’ll have some pics and descriptions for you in a few hours… one hour less now… Come enjoy your lack of sleep from DST with a beer at Cal Shabu! Happy Hour extends to both Saturday and Sunday Lunches!! Join us 11:30-2PM.

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!