Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House, a Japanese hot pot restaurant now open in Boston’s Chinatown, is built around one major selling point: All-you-can-eat wagyu, delivered tableside on demand during each 90-minute seating.
The setup is pretty simple. There are four all-you-can-eat tiers on the menu, ranging from the $45-per-person basic wagyu set (unlimited slices of American wagyu shoulder cut, brisket, and chuck ribeye, plus chicken, Kurobuta pork, and a seasonal vegetable platter) to the $98-per-person diamond wagyu set (everything in the basic package, plus a variety of Japanese A5 and Austrailian wagyu cuts, a seafood platter, and unlimited appetizers like wagyu bone marrow and wagyu nigiri). Pick from two of four bubbling hot pot broths, including tomato, a house broth with ponzu, spicy miso, and a sweet-meets-savory sukiyaki broth.
Just a few weeks into its debut, the restaurant is already drawing crowds eager to try the buzzy new shabu-shabu spot. Each seating is limited to 90 minutes but, due to an automated ordering system, the food lands on the table fast.
This is the first Mikiya to hit Boston, but far from the first in operation. The Los Angeles-based company behind this unlimited wagyu party, the Chubby Group, owns a slew of restaurants in California that riff on the all-you-can-eat wagyu model, from other Mikiya locations to Yakiniku, an all-you-can-eat Japanese barbecue restaurant. (Other Mikiya locations have popped up in Las Vegas, Houston, New York, and Honolulu.) There are diner membership models at the restaurants, too, which offer an even lower per-person price for the set meals — kind of like a “Costco of Wagyu,” as Eater LA puts it.
There’s a lot of wagyu at Mikiya, but that’s not all they serve. Seafood platters come with the more expensive all-you-can-eat meal tiers. Christina Hickey/Mikiya
The company can sell all-you-can-eat slices of the luxurious beef for less than the price of one cut of wagyu at any steakhouse in town because they buy the meat in such large quantities at a time, co-founder David Zhao told Eater LA last year. They also raise their own cattle in partnership with domestic farms, too.
In Chinatown, Mikiya joins other recent restaurant newcomers including Japanese soba shop Somenya (now its next-door neighbor on Hudson Street) and dumpling hot spot Fuchun Ju. The same team behind Mikiya also opened a location of the popular Japanese cheesecake chain Uncle Tetsu right below the second-floor hot pot restaurant. It keeps late hours — open until 10 p.m. nightly — which makes for an excellent final stop after filling up on wagyu upstairs.
Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House is located at 21 Hudson Street, Unit 101, in Chinatown. It is open daily for lunch and dinner.
Read more here >>https://boston.eater.com/2025/1/16/24344453/mikiya-wagyu-shabu-house-opening-boston