Review Shabu Restaurant - Chatswood

Seems like business has died enough that they have resorted to using old and even spoiled produce. The three of us ordered 2 shabu shabu and 1 sukiyaki. Everyone is provided with a basket of prepared vegetables. All the white onions had brown and soft parts, clearly spoiled. We salvaged the parts that were still good. The egg provided for the sukiyaki sauce had runny, watery white and the yolk did not hold together at all which are indications of old eggs. So did the next few replacement eggs. It felt like we could have cracked open all the eggs there and still had gotten bad eggs so we decided to not bother with the egg sauce and shared the shabu shabu sauces. Why the fuss over one egg? Firstly, for those who are unfamiliar, the egg for sukiyaki is eaten raw. We didn't want to risk food poisoning. Even the eggs you get at the supermarket (which aren't the freshest) have whites the consistency of snot (slimy, thick and gelatinous) and the yolk is a shiny, golden sun that holds its form unless broken. Secondly, almost as important as food health and safety is that the egg sauce is rather unique to sukiyaki and it tastes delicious. Sukiyaki is not sukiyaki without the egg sauce. This seriously ruined our appetites. We became apprehensive to eat anything here. We were even deciding earlier to order some side of seafood but we changed our minds. However, we noted that the rest of the ingredients were fine so we ate the rest. What made our dining experience worse was when the staff member serving us changed attitudes from friendly to clearly sulky and indignant after replacing the eggs. No apology or acknowledgement. The hotpot broth tasted bland and it was pale. Even before the broth takes on the characters of the cooked protein and vegetables it should have substantial flavour and colour. You should be able to distinctly taste the konbu and the dashi and the broth shouldn't be pale. We could be wrong but we suspect that the broth was made with more flavouring than stock. Even the rice was poorly made and the tea had an unpleasant taste. Quality aside, $33 per person for shabu shabu and $38 per person for sukiyaki didn't feel like good value for the portions we received. The saving grace was that the meat was of decent quality and taste, the other vegetables were fine, and that the dipping sauces were good. The food was quite good but the overall experience was that unsatisfying that we walked down the street to Ichimaru and got ourselves some pork katsu. That has only ever happened once before where the dining experience was so bad that I had to eat another meal straight after to 'compensate'. I can see why business here is dead.