Grayson and I have driven past boiling point for months now and just haven’t had the time to go yet. Ironically, we picked one of the hottest days in the summer to go for a hotpot dinner, it wasn’t the brightest idea we’ve ever had, but if hot pot was the craving of the day, we were going to go.
There’s a decent amount of seating on the inside, they had booths for 2-3 people parties as well as larger tables for party groups. Boiling point is a hot pot chain that began in California and made it’s way all the way up to British Columbia. The first store was opened a few years ago in RIchmond, but the Burnaby shop just opened up not too long ago.
Boiling point is unlike any other because they use a special pot burner unique to them that they actually had patented! Well, enough with the background info now and back to the food. There are ten different types of hotpots to choose from, seven of which are regular sized ($11.99) and three are larger portion ones.($15.99) They had three signature sauces; chili oil, garlic soy, and garlic chili sauce? I’m not too sure on the last chili sauce but it was my favorite out of the three.
Kimchi hot pot
I predictably ordered the kimchi hotpot, which came with a bowl of rice, enoki mushrooms, pork slices, fish ball dumplings with a filling inside, meatball, tempura, clam, tofu, imitation crab, nappa cabbage, vermicelli, and an egg. I also got to choose the level of spiciness of the soup, they offered not spicy, tiny spicy, mild spicy, medium spicy, very spicy, and FLAMING spicy if you’re just a daring one.
Right when the hotpot arrived, I could already tell how it was unique enough to get a special patent, the pot was at rolling boil in less than 3 minutes of being lit in front of me and kept that level of boiling throughout the whole meal, it was sort of amazing actually, since that never happens.
I enjoyed the hotpot because I’m a bit of a veggie monster and nappa cabbage was offered in heaping amounts. I liked the kimchi soup base as well since it actually had kimchi flavor to it.
Beef hotpot
Grayson ordered beef hotpot that came with nappa, vermicelli, beef sliced, enoki mushroom, meatball, a big portion of beef slices, tomato, tofu, corn and kamboko. He ordered it not spicy (of course), and he had a bowl of rice too. He enjoyed the hotpot thoroughly and the huge amount of nappa cabbage was a plus for him as well. Although there was a lot of beef slices, he didn’t appreciate that the hotpot came to the table with everything already in the pot and boiling since the beef got tough really fast since they over cooked. So his tip to you is to ask for an extra bowl and take all the beef out first to prevent such a thing.
On another visit…
Seafood hotpot
I decided that we would both try something new so I got the seafood tofu pot which came with vermicelli, egg, sliced pork, enoki, tofu, calamari, clam, prawns, cuttlefish, fishball and fish fillet. It also came with a good amount of freshly chopped romaine lettuce (I think) on top to float my veggie loving boat. I decided to get my soup in “spicy” this time instead of “medium” the way I always do and was glad I did because it was the perfect amount of heat for me. With that being said, I didn’t find this soup to be as flavorful as the kimchi one.
Eeeeee look at the prawns! So yums!
House special
Grayson got the House special hot pot and liked it better than the beef one he usually gets when we’re here because it didn’t feel as meat heavy. The house special hot pot has nappa cabbage, fermented tofu, prok slices, kamaboko fish cake, meat ball, quail egg, pork blood, salty veggies, tomatoes, clams and green onion. He also liked this one better because it reminded him of what he would of eaten back home and said that this type of hot pot is hard to come by here in Vancouver.
Sauces
Okay okay, now that you’ve endured my foodie ramblings…here’s the recipe to boiling point’s “perfect sauce” combination: 3 tablespoons chili bean sauce, 1 tablespoon chili oil, and 1 tablespoon garlic soy sauce! If you’re not a crazy baker and don’t have a measuring spoon in your back pocket, just measure it out in a 3:1:1 ratio with the teaspoons provided!
Oh and before I forget, Boiling Point recently got STAMP CARDS! Buy 5 drinks get one free or buy 10 pots and get one free! I’m a total sucker for loyalty cards like this so I guess I’m going to be back some time veeerrrryyy soon. (: