Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House

FOOD

The food program is organized as a ladder. The $45 Basic Set starts with American wagyu cuts alongside Jidori chicken, Kurobuta pork and seasonal vegetables. Silver, at $55, brings Australian wagyu into the rotation. Gold, at $78, adds Japanese A5 wagyu along with the Australian and American selections, while the $98 Diamond tier carries the broadest combination of A5 beef, premium seafood and specialty dishes. Choosing a tier therefore determines the range of the meal before the first pot begins to simmer.

Wagyu is the reason to come, and the cuts are prepared for shabu rather than steakhouse thickness. American wagyu brisket, chuck ribeye and shoulder cut form the base. Australian wagyu expands that same general set of cuts with deeper marbling, and the upper tiers introduce Japanese A5 brisket and chuck ribeye. Because each slice spends only moments in the broth, the meal encourages comparison: leaner against richer, brisket against ribeye, one broth against the other.

The divided pot makes broth choice part of that comparison. Sukiyaki brings a sweet-savory base that works especially well with the pasteurized egg served for dipping. Spicy miso offers a fuller, chile-edged direction, while Japanese tomato adds acidity against the fattier beef. A house broth rounds out the choices. Keeping two broths active at once lets the same cut land differently from one side of the pot to the other without committing the whole meal to a single flavor.

Mikiya also gives the richer tiers foods that never need to enter the broth. Wagyu tartare, wagyu nigiri, sweet shrimp sashimi and wagyu bone marrow break up the sequence of cooked beef with chilled, raw or deeply savory bites. They make the meal feel closer to an extended wagyu tasting than a simple progression of meat plates, particularly when a table alternates those specialties with rounds from the pot.

Seafood becomes more substantial toward the top of the menu. Pearl grouper joins the premium selection, and the Diamond tier reaches into abalone, oyster, scallop, shrimp and crab. These cook on a different clock from the paper-thin beef, slowing the pot down and changing its texture. The seafood is useful not only as additional abundance but as relief from repeated wagyu, especially after several increasingly marbled cuts.

Vegetables and starches keep the pot from becoming an uninterrupted parade of protein. Napa cabbage, shimeji mushrooms, tofu, pumpkin, corn, tong ho, tomato, konjac noodles and udon can be worked into the broth between meat rounds. The sauce setup adds another layer of control with ponzu, sesame, chile, green onion, garlic and other condiments, while sides such as seaweed salad, gyoza, shrimp tempura and wagyu minced rice provide short detours from the pot.

Dessert is comparatively simple: matcha, strawberry and vanilla ice cream cool the finish after a meal built around steam, broth and rich beef. That restraint makes sense after the upper tiers. Mikiya’s abundance is concentrated where it counts most — in the succession of wagyu cuts, the ability to work two broths at once and the premium dishes that can keep arriving between rounds. The pleasure is not seeing everything on a buffet at once, but watching the table repeatedly refill.