Boiling Point: Personal-Sized Hot Pots in Burnaby

Boiling Point is a Taiwanese hot pot soup specialty restaurant with 2 locations in BC and 15 more in the USA.

They are best known for their personalized hot pots and bubble tea. I was invited by ChineseBites and tried all their hot pots with a few other bloggers. I’ve been here before, but its always nice to revisit restaurant to see what has changed.

There is booth seating, so its good for groups of 4.

There’s also one larger table if you have a big group like us.

Boiling Point has 10 different hot pots and you can do add-ons to them.

You can choose your level of spiciness for each hot pot:

1. None
2. Mild
3. Medium
4. Very spicy
5. Flaming spicy

House Special Hot Pot has napa cabbage, fermented tofu, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, kamaboko, pork balls, clam, quail egg, pork blood, pork intestine, nira, preserved vegetables, tomato, and cilantro.

I wasn’t a big fan of this hot pot since it has a lot of odd ingredients like the fermented tofu, pork blood and intestines. It always has this weird taste that I dislike.

Seafood and Tofu Hot Pot has Taiwanese bok choy and under all of that is shrimp, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, frozen tofu, baby octopus, clam, cuttlefish ring, fish fillet, fish ball, vermicelli, egg, and green onion.

Kimchi Hot Pot has napa, vermicelli, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, egg, kamaboko, meat ball, clam, fuzhou fish Ball, kimchi, firm tofu, fried tofu skin, imitation crab stick, and green onion.

This is one of my favourites. The kimchi isn’t very spicy and when it is cooked, it has a very nice savoury flavour. A good balance of ingredients.

Beef Hot Pot has napa, vermicelli, sliced angus beef, enoki mushroom, tomato, firm tofu, tempura, corn, pork ball, kamaboko, fried tofu skin, imitation crab stick, green onion, and cilantro.

Lamb Hot Pot has napa, vermicelli, sliced lamb, enoki mushroom, Imitation crab stick, kamanoko, pork blood, rice cake, organic maitake mushroom, clam, pickled mustard greens, firm tofu, tempura, fried tofu skin, egg, green onion, and cilantro. This was a decent hot pot and you can’t go wrong with it.

Curry Fish Ball Hot Pot is only available in Canada and Washington location. Inside the hot pot is napa, vermicelli, slice pork, enoki mushroom, imitation crab stick, fish ball, fried tofu skin, corn, tempura, mountain yam, Chinese string bean, egg, and green onion. It was a good hot pot and the flavours were good.

Taiwanese Spicy Hot Pot is served flaming spicy. Man, this was SPICY. Don’t get it if you’re not able to handle spicy. Also in this hot pot is cabbage, instant noodle, sliced angus, enoki mushrooms, clams, fish balls, cuttlefish ring, pork intestine, pork blood rice cake, fried tofu skin, maitake mushroom, frozen tofu, green onion, and cilantro.

Japanese Miso Hot Pot has cabbage, udon, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, clam, fish ball, fish fillet, organic maitake mushroom, crab, fried tofu skin, soft tofu, egg, and green onion.

Thai Flavour Hot Pot has cabbage, taro stem, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, cuttlefish ring, fish ball, clam, crab, baby octopus, organic maitake mushroom, shrimp, and cilantro. I didn’t really like this hot pot. It’s hard to eat the crab without getting too messy.

Tomato Veggie Hot Pot has nappa, vermicelli, sliced pork, enoki mushroom, tomato, firm tofu, corn, tofu skin, string beans, and king oyster mushrooms.

Organic Tofu Hot Pot is not a veggie dish as it has sliced pork and lobster ball.

Each hot pot comes with a bowl of rice. You would scoop some of the items into the rice bowl to cool down before you eat it.

They also have 3 sauces that you can mix together to dip your hot pot items into – Chili oil, garlic soy sauce, and chili bean sauce.You can also purchase bottles of these to take home.

You mix a little bit of each into your sauce dish.

Spicy Fermented Tofu is evil in disguise. It’s not for everyone and has a stinky feet odor to it. Some people love it, but I wouldn’t want to eat this again.

Udon is an extra item you can order if you need more substance to your hot pot.

Original Wok Noodle is their own specialty noodle that they have in packages.

Spinach Wok Noodle is similar to the one above but with spinach, thus the slight green color. Good al dente texture and it was enjoyable.

Fresh Milk Tea uses real milk instead of powder. When it arrives, you can tell the difference between the two densities of liquid, so the tea is on the bottom half and milk is on the other half.

I mixed it around and then it looked a lot more like milk tea. It was good but I would have preferred it half sweet.

Snow Cubes come in six different flavours:

• Strawberry
• Sesame
• Matcha
• Chocolate
• Taro
• Hokkaido Flavour with Brown Sugar Konjac

They look cute and is a nice refreshing dessert after the hot pot, but it was pretty difficult eating them. If you have sensitive teeth, biting into these cool blocks will cause you discomfort. The flavours were ok, but everyone hated the strawberry one as it tasted a bit artificial.

You can even take some home, but they can melt within 15 minutes. Especially during a hot summers day…it may not make it home in one piece.

Overall, the hot pots were ok, but some flavours were not very good. I would stick with the beef hot pot, kimchi hot pot and the curry fish ball hot pot. When it comes to the ingredients inside the hot pot, I don’t really like fermented tofu, blood, or intestines.

The menu has changed since the last time I came here in 2013, but I still don’t like how you can’t control the heat of the hot pot. I don’t like eating my food crazy hot in temperature. Everything keeps cooking until the flame underneath goes out. By that time, if you still have stuff in the hot pot, it gets over cooked.

I understand the appeal with personal hot pots, but I like the traditional hot pots because of the interactive experience and the ability to pick and choose everything that goes inside.

Foodology Disclaimer: I was invited by ChineseBites to dine at Boiling Point and my meal was comped. All thoughts are my own.

We Rate Boiling Point: 

Address:
5276 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

Website:
http://www.bpgroupusa.com/home.php

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