I wish this place was closer to Anaheim I'd be coming here more often. The servers are really great. The environment is lively but busy. There is a good variety of soup bases. I'd say probably about 7 or so. I decided to get the spicy sukiyaki base which was not as sweet as I've had at other places, but still delicious! The proteins selection was a wide range from brisket, to chicken, to even lobster with sizes ranging from small to XL and one more than XL, I think it's called the sharing portion. However I ordered the Mokkoji cut (beef) in Large so I was plenty full afterwards. Almost to the point where I had stop eating, I was so full. Needless to say if you're really hungry going with the medium to large serving will most likely stuff you to the brim. The prices are VERY reasonable for what they are serving, so come by and check this place out. Make sure you arrive about 30-45 min before the time you want to eat dinner though as there is usually a sign up sheet. read more

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Since the pandemic started, we really loved getting take out from here. For about $50, it's more than enough to feed two adults. It comes with everything you need to enjoy shabu at home. Their sauces are also really good. I originally was going to give them 5 stars but took one away because they've cancelled my Grubhub orders multiple times. I wish they would disable it instead of letting me place an order and then cancelling it 20 minutes later. read more

Five star all the way. Good quality meat and very good sauce. The most positive thing about the experience was a very nice young man named Tyler. The nicest human being you will encounter. He cares about his customers. read more

It's been years since I've been to a shabu shabu restaurant and I was in for a surprise on how beautiful they presented my dish. Seeing that there was a long waiting list, you know this place is good! I was placed to sit at the bar table and the servers got out order right away. The staff were friendly and got our meal in a flash. The meat was delicious, especially after cooking in the spicy broth and dipped in their sauces. They even went around to ask if we wanted to try their drops of hot sauce and with one drop, it made a huge difference! read more

Mokkoji - Flat Iron "Mokkoji Cut" - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

I love the meats and side dishes of this place but not the soup base. The soup base was too bland for me, but I will return someday because of their high quality meat. read more

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We come here around 12pm on Wed, so the line is not crowded. We get serve right away. We love the sukiyaki broth and New York. We try out the salmon, its really fresh. read more

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If you're looking for a go-to Shabu place, LOOK NO FURTHER. MOKKOJI SHABU SHABU IS THE BEST. My friend and I ordered the 32 PC Flat Iron "Mokkoji Cut" which is meant to be shared with 2 people. It came with an abundance amount of meat that was actually marinated in sauce & garlic. SUPER FLAVORFUL and the quality of meat was good too! I got the Sukiyaki broth which is a traditional sweet Japanese broth. I do appreciate that they also have other broth choices like spicy miso, pork broth, and chicken. Sweet or spicy, you're guaranteed to have a soup base you like. My friend & I got our own separate side of veggies that came with the meal as well as rice. The side of veggies had greens, a piece of tofu, and udon noodles. The veggies & broth are refillable! Our meal also came with 3 different dipping sauces. One was a peanut sauce, a citrus ponzu sauce, and a raw egg dipping sauce (which you can also choose to cook). The table had green onions and garlic on the side which you can use to enhance the flavor of your broth. The staff was so friendly & accommodating. Our waitress always made sure our water was filled & always checked up on us if there was anything else we needed. Everything here was super tasty and high in quality. Can't wait to bring my other friends here! read more

Mokkoji - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

This is my all time favorite Shabu spot in Orange County, and I'm sooo glad they have the waitlist available on yelp! It's always packed for lunch and dinner hours with lines outside. For starters, I usually get their garlic shrimp, shishito peppers, or garlic edamame while waiting for the main entrees. Their thinly sliced meat options are perfect. If you want a fattier meat, I like the Toro Fatty Belly as they season it real nicely. Otherwise, I also get the prime rib or brisket. One of my gfs only eats chicken, and this is also her favorite spot for Shabu. They have a dinner for 2 special that's perfect if you're real hungry! Veggies are refillable for free so that's a nice plus. For their broths, I enjoy their spicy miso, spicy pork broth, or if you're feeling a little sweeter, try the spicy sukiyaki. At the end of the day, if all boils down to their sauces for everything to be dipped in. Their in house made sesame sauce is the best I've ever had and distinctively different from all other Shabu spots in OC and LA. Hands down. Thank you Mokkoji for your existence! Be back soon. read more

Mokkoji - Toro fatty belly with spicy miso broth - my go to! - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

Food is always good and consistent! There were plenty of seats on a Friday afternoon and we were seated right away. I'm from out of town, and I alway eat here when I visit OC. read more

Gosh, I love you so much!!!!!! I've been going to Mokkoji for a few years now and it's literally my FAVORITE place to eat and I'm not even a local. I live 315+ miles away (bay area) and I fly here just to eat! It really never fails and I hope it never will! I get the same thing every time: large toro belly with spicy miso broth WITH a single drop of hot drop! Throw some grounded daikon, puréed garlic, and chopped green onions in there, DELICIOUS!!! Then drench your meat into the sesame dip and veggies into the ponzu, EXPLOSION IN YOUR MOUTH! They participate in Yelp waitlist for a while now, which is awesome!! Just check-in on the way here. However, make sure your entire party is present! They will NOT seat you unless everyone's there. Lunch time is obviously a bit cheaper, but dinner time pricing is just as fair. Not AYCE, but a large order will do ya just fine. Order more meat if anything, but trust me, I've never had anyone complain that a single order didn't fill them. I LOVE YOU. read more

I had no idea that this place has been around for so long. When we finally checked it out, we were really surprised by the long wait, but I'd say that it was pretty worth it in the end. Their selections for hot pot are pretty big. I've seen more broth types here than at House of Shabu Shabu. Plus, the meats here are amazing! If you can try the beef platter, you won't be let down...just very full and satisfied. And that toro beef belly was some of the most tender meat that I've tried at hot pot. What i ended up getting was a spicy pork broth and the dinner for 2 beef sampler. Yeah the price is pretty up there but you get a lot of meat (so bring friends). Word of warning though: the hot drops are no joke. If you can handle more than 2 drops, props to you. read more

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This place is amazing. It's so easy to use waitlist on Yelp! Love love Shabu specially on cold days. I normally get the spicy miso with prime beef. This is one of my top 3 locations I like to eat Shabu. Promise this place won't disappoint. Great customer and great food. read more

Worst possible experience tonight- waited 2 hours for nothing Long story short, I had a few friends fly in from NorCal and I recommended Mokkoji as I've enjoyed their food in the past. Ended up being the worst possible experience for them, never recommending this place again. They need a big improvement in their customer service, check in experience and need to train the hostess more. We (party of 7)arrived to check in and put our name down at 6:21 pm. It estimated for us to come back by 7:30. Perfect so we waited over an hour outside and when it was about time I stopped to check the status. We saw a big table cleaned up and I asked if we were next. They said there was table of 9 in Front of us and hostess explained that they haven't checked in. I asked if we would be seated since they haven't shown. Hostess explained they give them 5 mins to come. Ok. 5 mins. I check back in. She said they still waiting for them. Ok.. 10 mins later? I ask again...She said.. oh we now start counting 4 more mins from now. We wait another 4. They then said we need to call them to ask if they are on the way. If the rule is waiting 5 mins, why do you keep changing your rules? They ended showing up 25 mins later and they gave them the table. We ended up waiting over 2 hours for nothing. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone who values their own time. Their attitude was the worst regarding this issue. I've attached as proof picture of empty table, as well as Yelp showing over estimated wait time, as well as time stamp text message showing us waiting over 2 hours. I will not be returning read more

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Omg this place is so good Fresh meat, good service that what I wanted If u don't like it I will refund money for u read more

Visited for in dining a few weeks ago and was asked whether my part of 4 wanted to be seated indoors or out. We specifically said we would not mind waiting for a table indoors. About 40 minutes later, we checked in with them and they seated us outdoors.... We did not want to make a big deal out of it so we just sat outdoors. We have not been to this location or dined in any mokkoji locations in a while so figuring out the menu took a little while to understand. For our party of 4 we wanted to order 1 SH meat option and 3 XL meat options. Please look at the menu others post on yelp. The menu is not written clearly and SH is not defined anywhere on the menu, so how is anyone suppose to understand what "SH" is, and the only thing listed next to "SH" is 32 pieces. So to our understanding SH seems like that's the largest choice of meat selection. Our server, possibly name Brady? did not do a good job explaining what "SH" means. He proceeded to tell us its a lot of meat and its meant to be shared? So we thought okay, he's being nice to let us know that is WAY too much food for one person, so we told him ok lets change it to 4 XL meats and cancel the one SH. I also asked if he suggested marinated meat or not.... and his reply? Well marinaded is more flavor. Thank you for stating the absolute obvious, but I asked what he suggests, not what it is. His attitude came off rude and not very customer friendly. Another server brought out our meats and asked which one is the shared meat option. I was so confused as to what that meant and she told us the SH. Which apparently is to be SHARED between two people. We asked our server to come explain since we were so confused, and he said its the SH which is shared. If we order that, it counts as TWO meat entrees, even though we ordered 4 soups, we can only get 1 SH, and 2 XL meats. If we wanted more meat, we would have to order it on the side? We then told him we thought we cancelled that and wanted 4XL and in addition no where on the menu did it tell you what SH meant nor did he do a good job explaining. So we told him ok, we were confused by how it was written AND neither did we understand what he was saying AND we said we wanted 4XLs instead, but he stood there and basically told us that wasn't what we ordered, blamed us for ordering wrong and not understanding, and it just got awkward at that point and he just left. Ok.... and even if we didn't get what he meant, he can at least try to provide decent customer service and ask what we would like and attempt to see if he can fix it? Or give us a few slices, and charge us the FULL price? But instead, he did none of that and walked off. The whole night he never once came back to our table to check up on us and avoided eye contact with us. So it seems to me like he knew he messed up but would not own up to the small mistake. After this whole situation, I decided I rather order online and take it to go. Ordering through yelp is easy and quick. We waited at home until we got the "Order is ready now for pick up" to go in and pick it up. When we went to the front and tried to pick up the order, they said our order wasn't ready, it was not even made because the staff did not see the order? The staff was very apologetic and informed us they would make our order right away and would take less than 10 minutes. Now again today (7/7/21), placed an order online through yelp and waited for the order is ready to be picked up. Order placed at 7:09 PM. Got the "Ready to pick up at 7:39" I decided to wait a little bit more since last time they did not acknowledge the order. At 8:32 when my bf showed up to pick up our order, the food was NOT ready, AGAIN, and then they inform us that they did not see the order and will make the food in ten minutes. Again, they were apologetic, but that is not the point? Then after this whole situation, they tell us they can only offer us 10% our next order if we call in by phone and took down our name and number. We finally received our food at 8:45. Over 1.5 hours later. Not only has this happened once, it happened TWICE. If no one is going to be checking the yelp/grub hub orders on the tablets, why bother having it. It seems like a big inconvenience to customers because even if you order, wait for a confirmation, and wait for the food is ready to be picked up, you still won't get your food because the staff does not check their orders... Will not be coming back to this location. I much rather drive farther to the Costa Mesa location or any location, and not take their offer of 1x "10% off" to have better service and food that will actually be ready when promised. read more

Mokkoji - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

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My go to place whenever I eat shabu or anything related. My favorite Japanese hot pot place THAG I have ever had. Priced well too. Usually a long wait, be sure to make reservations! read more

Most garbage full of lies place ever. We checked in and they told us a 1 hour 30 minute wait. Ok fine we waited 1 hour 45 minutes, went to ask about the table, they told us two more parties ahead of us and they were going to give them 5 minutes to come or the table was ours, 15 minutes go by, we ask again, same story "we're going to give them 5 more minutes " wtf? When does this 5 minutes ever start counting? Then they start calling them AFTER the 5 minutes and give them more time to come. No explanation to us at all, extremely rude unprofessional staff, waited almost 1 hour 45 minutes for this garbage place, I will never ever come back and make sure to tell as many people as possible to avoid this absolute lying pos dump by all means. read more

This place is built different. Honestly, I see very little reason to go to any other Shabu Shabu place in OC unless you really want AYCE but I've never left this place feeling like I couldn't be satisfied without spending a lot more money than AYCE would cost. Mokkoji blows out any and all other Shabu Shabu competitors. It reigns supreme and I will defend that claim to the end. read more

If you value your time, do not come to this place. The staff here are rude and kept lying to us about our seating situation. Super unprofessional staff, and they have no idea to gauge time. We wasted 2 hours here waiting for a table and ended up leaving because the staff was super rude and the wait time was super inaccurate. The party before us was a no show and they kept telling us they have to hold the table for a longer time and then 20 minutes pass and the staff ended up calling the other party and the party confirmed that they will arrive. So we waited 2 hours and that would mean we would have to wait for that table to leave since we were a party of 7. So our original 1.5 hours wait they told us would've turned into 3 hours... we went to tang 150 next door and the service and food was so much better. Do not recommend read more

My favorite shabu place! I absolutely NEED to come here every time I visit OC. Lunch is super affordable at $14 and worth every penny. You can pick from an assortment of soup bases. I usually go with sukiyaki and it is really flavorful. Also, you pick from a variety of good quality meats. The toro belly is *chef's kiss*. Ask for it marinated for extra flavor! The sesame sauce is so delicious- I dunk my meat in it every time. I always leave feeling full, content, and already looking forward to the next time I can come back. read more

Mokkoji - Toro beef belly - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

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I love this place. I love shabu shabu and this is the best one I've had so far. Great selections and quality on meat. Many different options in general. The price is surprisingly not too bad. We went early for dinner on a weeknight and it was full. My friend told me the wait on the weekends are an hr long. It's definitely a good place to check out if you like shabu shabu. If you don't like shabu shabu it might converts you. read more

Mokkoji Shabu Shabu Bar is my favorite place on the planet to eat shabu shabu. The restaurant is intimate so I do recommend making a reservation if possible or joining on the waitlist through Yelp before arriving. The restaurant is clean and the staff are so friendly. Just know which broth and which meat you want. I always order the Sukiyaki and the toro fatty belly. I had tried my friend's pork broth and that was divine. Amazing, it tastes like tonkotsu ramen broth but way better. They'll bring out your broth and meat. For the Sukiyaki, it comes with a pasteurized egg sauce you can dip your meat in. Safe to eat, and really delicious. You can get unlimited veggies (kale, bokchoy, and cabbage). Overall, a really great experience, and I highly recommend stopping by here the next time you're in Irvine! read more

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Sorely disappointed. Came at 9:15 on Thursday 7-13-23 was turned away with a smile on the server's face because they just happen to be closing an hour early. Sat outside looking for other food options with my party as we saw a couple walk in sit down and start dining. If you don't want to take in parties bigger than 2 an hour before closing just say you can't take bigger parties rather than lie and say that you're closing early :^) read more

We've always loved Mokkoji, and today's lunch was made even better by our amazing waiter Tyler, who spent time helping us get the most out of our meal. Thanks Tyler for making a great place even better! read more

Mokkoji is the perfect restaurant for shabu shabu even though the lunch price has become more expensive fairly recently. The lunch special with miso, lamb and a drink (black or green tea) will set you back around $18.50. It still fills up for lunch on a weekday so you might want to arrive before they open at 11:30 and put yourself on the Yelp waitlist outside! A mortar bowl and wooden pestle is set out before your table so that you can grind those sesame seeds into a powder and add sesame sauce to it. Go ahead and sprinkle green onion and chopped raw garlic from the metal containers into your dipping sauce too! The iced green tea was a sweet iced mix while we waited for the food to be set out. The heat setting on the side of each table was initially set to 1200 but I manually bumped it up to 1500 to quicken the heating of the miso broth. The vegetable bowl was filled with kale, tofu, carrots, squash, bok choy, udon noodles, enoki mushrooms, cabbage, and other leafy greens. These were heated first before the plate of lamb sprinkled with green onions arrived. The broth gets scalding hot so take out your food quickly! You can adjust the controls manually such that the top control adjusts the electric stove further away from the control and the bottom control adjusts the stove closer to the control. The mix of meat and vegetables are incredibly delicious when savoring over the bowl of rice. The service was quite good today as our server repeatedly came by to refill our water or broth and adjust the temperature. Great food, great service and a great experience! Will be back if my wallet can hold up! Recommendation- lunch special with lamb and miso broth and green tea drink. Pros good service delicious vegetables Cons pricey lunch gets crowded read more

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Got spicy miso taste like water and red pepper flakes. No flavor at all and the rice was wet. This place is very average. Not sure why it has so many good reviews. I guess people don't have good taste buds. Will not be coming here again. If you are every near a jazz cat that place has good taste. All of their broths have flavor, no watered down crap. read more

The meat and food here are high quality. We had a great experience here, and wouldn't mind going back. There are a lot of combination options, so it gets a little confusing. We ordered the flatiron and it was delicious. You get a good portion of vegetables. For the soup base we had spicy miso and sukiyaki. The sauces are traditional sesame and ponzu sauce. We love sesame oil and they have it there! Not all Shabu Shabu restaurants have sesame oil so this is definitely a plus for us. (Sometimes we being our own oil with us.) The prices are pretty pricey compared to some other places we've been to. However, the food is really good. I also highly recommend the garlic edamame. I could never get tired of eating that! read more

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This place has the worst customer service during COVID-19. We put our name on the waitlist for a party of 7. After two hours of wait, we checked in with the hostess to see how much longer we would have to wait. The hostess told us that there is still a party of 9 group in front of us, but the party was not not there. The hostess told us to wait for another 5 mins for them. We waited for another 5 minutes, and the group still did not check in. Later on, the hostess told us that she has to make extra effort to call the party of 9. We were surprised about the "above and beyond" customer service they have. However when we were notified that it is our turn we check in, we didn't not get any calls or the "extra effort + above and beyond" customer service. Don't give this restaurant your business during covid-19. Go elsewhere as they don't care here read more

Best place to go if you are looking for meat quality. It's not ayce, but this place has the most quality meat for shabu.

We got the Flat Iron & Toro Flat Belly for the two of us with Spicy Pork Broth which was our favorite. Both meat types were soft and delicious. The Toro is softer, altho the Flat Iron is also soft as well. And, Toro is more towards the sweet side, maybe if you're ordering Toro dont add on the marinate bcs the meat imo is already sweet. Definitely try the spicy pork broth bcs its really good and not really spicy. If you want more spicy, you can add on the chili oil which the waiter will bring around to ask if you wanna add it to ur broth/sauce/or anything. This place has become one of my fav shabu place in OC area! read more

Mokkoji - Flat Iron "Mokkoji Cut", Toro "Fatty Belly" - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

Great quality meat! The raved beef belly definitely lived up to the hype- quality, flavor, and plating. One downside is limited seating, as it's quite a small restaurant. read more

Mokkoji - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

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Quality food and great service! We went for my son's birthday. Quality of the meat was excellent and loved spicy soup. Definitely going back for more shabu shabu! read more

we've recently been extremely disappointed by the garden grove location the last time we went to go eat shabu because the meat was paper thin and we couldn't enjoy our food. after looking up this location, we thought "well this location has great reviews so we should try here" and WE WERE SO SATISIFED! first of all, just looking at the meats and how they're cut i could see a huge difference. not too thin like garden grove location, and not overly thick. juuuust right we ordered a XL prime rib and a Large toro to share. my bf got the spicy pork bone and i got the original broth. he added a whole vial of the hot drops and about half a vial in each of his sauces (yeah i know fkn psycho) but it wasn't as spicy as they usually are ?? but anyways the soups were really tasty and the meats were AMAZING. the service was great, servers were extremely attentive and checked up on our table quite frequently i really like the outdoor patio, despite a lot of random ppl walking thru because it's near the sidewalk; it was shaded, quiet and very secluded we'll definitely be coming back to this location because everything was great. food was delicious, service was amazing and the whole experience was much better than the times we went to the other locations read more

The food here is amazing! Service and great! Always happy and helpful! First shabu place where we were about to eat with our 2yr old without worrying about if he was going to touch the pot and we felt so comfortable. read more

I cant find any shabu shabu place that can beat them in the area. Service can be a bit slow when you ask for veggie refill, but quality is superb! Dont be too aggressive on the spicy drops, thats really strong, but i love it! read more

First time trying this place during lunch. Definitely DEFINITELY utilize the yelp wait list because it does get pretty crowded during lunch - especially when it first opens. We joined the wait list around 11:37 AM, and didn't get to the restaurant until 11:45 AM - we checked in and got seated within 5 minutes! We decided to get one lunch special and one large toro set. We were able to try spicy sukiyaki and spicy miso. If you like a more sweet taste - then definitely try the sukiyaki - it's nice and not too sweet. I personally really enjoyed the spicy miso with my toro meat set. The toro literally melted in your mouth and is super delicious with the dipping sauces. The rice they give you is a mixture of white and brown rice - I like that better because you taste the grains of rice while slurping on your soup - sometimes white rice can get a little bit too soggy - so I love the mix! The vegetable bowl comes with some broccoli, kale, carrots, cabbage, tofu, and some udon noodles. I save those for last and cooks pretty fast in the soup. The lunch set comes with a drink - your choice of tea black or green - with a peach syrup - I love it - not too sweet - it's really subtle and really compliments everything! Looking forward to coming again soon read more

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Broth: spicy miso is good but the spicy pork bone broth is also delicious Meat: toro is so good! Give me more prime angus is also really good too Bang for your bucks: weekday lunch deal and dinner for 2 options are pretty good. The dinner for 2 comes with hot sake or Sapporo; garlic shrimp = so good! Must try. Veggies: side veggies with each meat orders which is also nice, except they can skip the kale I'll eat kale salad any day but kale in my shabu...I preferred we didn't. read more

We came here on a Sunday for lunch. The wait was not too bad around 1pm. Overall the food is descent but the price is kind of expensive for the amount of meat you get. They don't offer lunch menu on the weekend. Based on that I would rather go to Miyabi Shabu down the street for a better price and get more meat. read more

Mokkoji - Japanese Near Me - Irvine, California

Great service and delicious food, would highly recommend waitlisting on the Yelp page, dinner wait times can vary. Love the pork and spicy pork broth. Only suggestion would be heat lamps on those chilly nights. read more

Terrible service and attitude towards customers. Front desk lady randomly adds people to cut in line for those that missed their call and removes people from the waitlist. Do not recommend coming. Terrible management. read more