After expanding to 56 branches around the country and two restaurants in Malaysia, Barbecue Plaza launches its upscale Japanese barbecue and shabu shabu restaurant, Fire Place, at Emporium. The eatery is elegant with contemporary décor in black and red. The imported Japanese barbecue stoves are “guaranteed” not to produce smoke or smell. (We, however, still felt our hair smelled a bit when leaving the place.) The restaurant plans to draw a crowd with yakiniku, shabu shabu and its special sauces. As Barbecue Plaza has been in the meat market for years, Fire Place uses the same local source, but will have seasonal menus which feature imported beef from Australia and Japan. Everything on the menu is created by Chef Ichii Junichi, who has 20 years of experience in this kind of establishment.
We tried their beef and pork set featuring karubi (beef sirloin), premium karubi, harami (belly) marinated with scallion and pork karubi, pork with miso or shio, which has some very tender cuts. We enjoyed every morsel because we could cook whatever we liked. We also had the shabu shabu set (beef karubi set), which is served with assorted vegetables and noodle. The tasty soup and healthy greens go well with yakiniku. Besides the two main menus, there are a la carte choices such as bibimba (Korean-style rice) in a hot stone bowl and seared sesame tuna.
For dessert, the chef has thankfully been more creative than others and offered something beyond green tea ice cream. For a real treat, try their vanilla ice cream in a creamy pumpkin sauce. It’s fantastic
Fire Place
