Make your own fun

(Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

One pitfall of eating at a shabu shabu restaurant, where you cook your own meal by dragging ingredients through hot broth on a tabletop burner, is that you can't blame the chef if dinner gets overcooked. No sending back an overdone sliver of beef or a shrimp trawling the bottom of the pot, forsaken while conversation, and broth, burbled away.

But that's a small price to pay for the fun of shabu, which has been rapidly swishing its way through the Boston area and now into Harvard Square. Shabu Square, which opened a few weeks ago in the former Cafe Paradiso spot, has a Thai influence - where most shabu shabu restaurants tend to be Japanese. Some of the broths here will taste familiar to anyone who's eaten Thai food spiced with coconut milk, chili, and lemongrass.

Shabu Square has five shabu broths and endless combinations of fish, meat, and vegetables. The meat combo ($12.95) comes with thin slices of raw pork and bright red pieces of rolled-up beef; the seafood platter ($13.95) with salmon, squid, scallops, and other sea creatures. Our waitress also brings two plates of raw vegetables, including chunks of corn on the cob and clumps of enoki mushrooms. The beef isn't the best quality, not particularly flavorful, but the seafood is fresh and the pork is perfect in the coconut milk broth we choose, Thai tom ka.

Chef Kamachat Kerdsomboon was born in Thailand, and also serves as head chef at two other Harvard Square Thai restaurants: 9 Tastes and Spice. The noodle dishes at Shabu Square, similar to those offered at Kerdsomboon's other establishments, are also stellar here, especially the sweet Thai noodle salad and yakisoba noodles (both $11.95 or $13.95). Salmon sashimi ($4), however, isn't memorable (you might even call it stringy), and the cute mini burgers ($6.95) are bland.

The "Grand Opening" sign still hangs in the window and service remains spotty, if cheerful. On our first visit, our table is swimming with food and cooking instruments, but little instruction on what to do with it all. After our repeated questions, the waitress turns on our stove and tells us to wait until the broth boils before depositing our ingredients, then let them simmer a few minutes. (We found that cooking time too long.) On a second visit, the waiter assures one of us that the dumplings ($5.95) are vegetarian - until he brings them to the table and announces they contain pork.

A handwritten sign in the women's bathroom was a dour antidote to the festivities beyond. It reads: "Use minimum toilet paper."