August 31, 2011
Having nothing to do on my weekday weekend (I get Mondays and Tuesdays off), me and some other friends that also had Monday off decided to go bowling. The weather was just cool enough to have some hot pot, so we headed over to Boiling Point afterwards.
I had actually read a review by Chow Times on the restaurant, but wasn’t far too excited about it when I first knew of its existence. A few days back I was browsing on what Taiwanese restaurants I have not yet try in the Richmond area (because that’s the only place you can get decent Taiwanese food), and I ran into the name of this restaurant on Urbanspoon. It was perfect! As summer was dying down, and with the weather cooling, hot pot season is just around the corner. I sent the link to my friend that I know LOOOOVVEEESSS hot pot. And so it became our dinner of choice on Monday.
So we each ordered a small pot, and I ordered a lychee slush.
The lychee slush. It was pretty good, and was pretty lychee-y. But because they topped it over the glass, the slush started melting and pooled on the table (oops!). There was also coconut jelly in it, and this was only $3.00. Normally at a regular bubble tea restaurant it would be around $4.75-ish. I mean it’s still expensive if you are going to compare to the price of slush in Taiwan, but relatively it’s pretty cheap.
This was what I ordered, the Kimchi hot pot. I was deciding on the Kimchi or the Stinky pot, and went with Kimchi cause my friend wanted the Stinky pot and I can always dip in hers. I ordered it with mild spiciness, because 1. Kimchi itself is already spicy, and 2. I don’t know how spicy their spicy is. It wasn’t bad, and I actually didn’t find it spicy at all, but then I can take pretty spicy food. The kimchi flavour definitely soaked into the soup. There were a lot of kimchi, by the end all I had left in the pot was kimchi. For the price ($9.99) it wasn’t bad at all. There weren’t a lot of meat, but it was still pretty filling.
This is the Stinky pot. The stink was there, but wasn’t over powering, I think to be authentic Taiwanese it needs a bit more stinkiness to it, but I suppose they don’t want people complaining about the smell. I had the broth and a meat ball from this pot. The meatball wasn’t really stinky, but the broth had a bit of stinkiness to it. It was good broth.
And lastly, this is the Lamb with mustard hot pot. Again the broth had a lot of taste to it, I loved this one, would have liked it s bit spicy, but my friend that ordered it doesn’t enjoy spicy as much as I do.
I think their win point for all the pots is the broth. The broth had a bit of seafood taste to it as well as all the different ingredients. The price we paid was reasonable and we were all pretty full. What I found interesting was that you can actually get new flame if your flame dies (I never knew that!). The only thing I didn’t like was probably how shallow the pot was. It was basically a tiny wok, and it looked like it would spill over any time. The service of the restaurant was decent, although they sat us down in a corner and didn’t come over till 20 or so minutes later. I also found it odd that it was trying to sell the fact that the restaurant is Taiwanese, yet all the servers in there were Chinese mainlanders. Not to be racist or anything, but I do find a lot of Chinese mainlanders to be rude and unhelpful in terms of restaurant services. But this restaurant was ok, perhaps because we weren’t horrible customers. LOL.
That being said, I fully enjoyed the food, and will be back again. I will try either the beef hot pot or the seafood hot pot.
–>click here for Boiling Point’s website <–
Wata for Lyfe 