Shabushabu Mayumon

Dinner at Shabushabu Mayumon starts with a wet hand towel and ends with a mountain of matcha shaved ice. What happens in between is a long omakase conga line of single-bite meats and vegetables, each of which is delightful and abstract enough to be molded, cast, and installed in the sculpture garden at MoMa for ants. Like its nearby sister restaurant Shabushabu Macoron (the only other omakase shabu shabu restaurant in the world), there’s just one chef here, who swishes individual bites of high-quality meat in broth before she dips them into sauce and places them in front of you. But unlike Macoron, where the food tends to be more straightforward Japanese, Mayumon experiments with mashups from other cultures - like Spanish ajillo, Italian bagna cauda, and Vietnamese pho. It’ll cost you $128 (before tip, tax, or drinks), but Shabushabu Mayumon is worth its price tag, especially if you want to celebrate with a lot of red meat in a setting that couldn’t be more different from a steakhouse.