Tadaima Shabu Shabu — park & walk from here
The newest hot pot in town, a block from the oldest Chinatown — park here; the next stops are on foot.
Key facts
- Tadaima Shabu Shabu, 50 S Virginia St in a downstairs room called “The Basement,” opened in June 2025 — table-side Japanese shabu-shabu, reservation-only, limited seating; owners Sean and Yumi Patterson.
- “Shabu-shabu” is the sound the thin slices make swishing through the hot broth — the Japanese cousin of the hot pot we just passed in Midtown.
- It stands downtown, a short walk from where Reno's Chinatown once stood — new Asian Reno on almost the same ground as the old.
Narration transcript
This is where we get out. Find a parking space here in the downtown core — a garage or the street, around Second and Virginia — because the next six stops are close together and we'll do them on foot. Take your time; the car will wait.
Right here, downstairs in a room they call The Basement, is Tadaima Shabu Shabu. It opened in the summer of 2025 — brand new — and it does shabu-shabu, the Japanese side of the hot-pot family: paper-thin slices of meat you swish through a simmering broth until they're just done. "Shabu-shabu" is literally the swishing sound. It's the same idea as the Midtown pot we passed: a slow meal you cook yourself, around a table, with people.
I point it out here for a reason. A room like this — Japanese, downtown, opened last year — is the newest chapter of Asian Reno. And it sits just a couple of hundred steps from the oldest: the river where Reno's Chinese community lived, and the Chinatown this city destroyed in 1908. New Asian Reno and old, almost on the same block. Let's walk down to the river and start there.