Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House
Orange County finally gets a great AYCE wagyu beef shabu shabu restaurant from Chubby Group
Having enjoyed Chubby Cattle BBQ, the all-you-can-eat wagyu beef BBQ restaurant chain with Los Angeles and (upcoming) Irvine locations, we knew that Las Vegas-based Chubby Group was capable of offering Orange County a better dining experience than Wagyu Factory – the expensive but underwhelming AYCE BBQ spaces it opened over the summer in Tustin and Lake Forest. With the successful October 2025 opening of sister concept Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House in Irvine’s Westpark neighborhood, Chubby’s OC operations are finally beginning to live up to their potential.
Mikiya offers guests AYCE access to wagyu beef at several tiers ranging from silver ($55 per person) to gold ($78) to diamond ($98) – each price discounted for paid members, and substantially reduced for kids, depending on their height (half-off under 51″, free under 39″ tall). As of spring 2026, non-AYCE access to a limited menu has been added during “Happy Hour” lunch and late night (9/10pm) hours, allowing each guest to pick four meat dishes and unlimited self-serve bar items for $33 (premium, Australian and M5 meats) or $43 (supreme, adding A5 meats), plus $2 to $10 a la carte add-ons.
Unlike Chubby Cattle, Mikiya’s focus is on Japanese-style shabu shabu: After you’re seated in one of the restaurant’s dark, beautiful dining spaces at a table with a shared boiling surface, you choose from two of four soup broths, order proteins from a tablet, grab additional items (noodles, veggies, dips) from a buffet, then dunk your selections to cook them. Friendly servers seat you, introduce you to the tablet ordering process, then repeatedly check in to deliver meats and seafood, clear used dishes, and offer help as needed.
Most guests will find that Mikiya’s silver AYCE tier offers more than enough options for an excellent meal. Beyond buffet access to minced and curried wagyu, noodles, vegetables, tofu fortune bags, and mini-bowls of wasabi-ish octopus, cooked squid, and seaweed salad, guests can order unlimited portions of beef, pork, chicken, and seafood from the tablet. Three types of thin-sliced Australian wagyu beef are star attractions, plus Japanese kurobuta pork and jidori chicken; cookable seafood platters with abalone, crab, scallops, fish, tiger shrimp, and oysters; raw sashimi dishes; carpaccio and hand rolls with salmon or yellowtail; fried chicken, shrimp, gyoza, fries, and buns. Silver guests may also choose one included “specialty” dish from five options – wagyu nigiri, wagyu tartare, wagyu bone marrow, sweet shrimp sashimi, or a bluefin tuna and uni hand roll – with each extra plate going for $6.
When we visited Wagyu Factory, we said that “raw or cooked, Wagyu Factory’s meat isn’t much to write home about” – but that’s thankfully not the case at Mikiya. Offered as a raw tartare, wagyu cubes with chopped avocado were rich and tasty, while even silver-tier silces of wagyu ribeye, shoulder, and brisket tasted excellent with the spicy miso broth we ordered; kurobuta pork absorbed its flavor and color even better. A house broth was closer to neutral, and meats submerged in it benefitted more from a spicy garlic and ponzu dipping sauce we made from ingredients at the buffet. Sukiyaki broth provides basically the same impact as the dipping sauce without the need for a separate bowl.
Mikiya’s seafood is equally fresh and plentiful, arriving in overwhelming quantities on the platter, and tasting great in raw sashimi, sushi, and carpaccio forms – the latter truffle oiled – as well as cooked in the broth. Guests seeking opportunities to go crazy on abalone and crab will have that option here, and though fish options are limited, the quality is solid enough to keep going even in the presence of wagyu. (At gold and diamond tiers, the wagyu shifts to Japanese and more premium Australian graded beef, if extra fat really matters to you.)
Other items were also hits, even if they weren’t as luxe as the sliced wagyu and seafood. An AYCE curry don offering – self-dispensed rice topped with either minced or curry wagyu – tasted delicious, even if it was using meat trimmings, and small kitchen plates including shrimp tempura, baked chicken wings, and chicken karaage provide tasty, ready-to-eat options between bites of shabu.
As part of the AYCE experience, Mikiya’s beverage station offers unlimited soda fountain drinks, hot tea, Calpico, milk tea, and a sweetened grapefruit jasmine green tea that we really enjoyed. Dessert is limited to soft serve ice cream, but solid: On our first visit, the two rotating flavors were strong coffee and sweet strawberry; on our second, the options were far milder flavored ube/taro and vanilla. Both times, they were nice ways to end the meal.
Our first experience with Chubby Group at Chubby Cattle’s LA location left us impressed, but our later visit to Tustin’s Wagyu Factory was dispiriting, so it wasn’t clear whether Chubby Group would be able to pull off an equally impressive AYCE wagyu experience in Orange County without cutting corners. Thankfully, Mikiya makes it obvious that this restaurant group can indeed offer something better than its non-wagyu shabu peers – albeit at a higher price point. We’ve enjoyed two meals already at Mikiya, and it’s a coin toss as to whether we like it better than the subsequently opened Irvine location of Chubby Cattle: They’re both good choices, so pick the one that meets your need for either shabu shabu or BBQ.
Stats
Price: $$$
Service: Table
Open Since: October 2025
Addresses
3745 Alton Pkwy.
Irvine, CA 92606
949.875.8002
Instagram: @mikiya.official