California back post 4 of 6. Stinky tofu, the first time I had heard of it was on Andrew Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods; though his description of it really didn't sound all that appetizing. However, I knew my boyfriend had always wanted to try it out, so when we went to California we stopped by Boiling Point in West Garvey. Upon spying the poster in the window facing the street I immediately gravitated to the house special hot soup. I <3 exotic cuts of meats!
The restaurant itself was pretty small, but it wasn't bad finding seating as we came pretty early for lunch service. However as we started eating, it quickly got busier as the peak of the lunch hour approached. With all the hot pots in the room it quickly heated up the surrounding environment, so it was fairly warm inside the restaurant. Thankfully I love the heat (<3 for Florida being warm 90% of the year), so it didn't bug me very much. However, I can see how after a while it might start to have an effect on others who might not like the room being that warm. Midway through service, the staff did end up opening a window over the door in order to let out some of the excess heat.
It was $8.99 for each hot pot with a free beverage for the lunch special, I mean who can beat that? The hot pots are individually sized and they're of a decent portion. Of course I decided on the House Special Hot Soup which contained stinky tofu, pork intestines, meat balls, salty veggies, quail egg, green nira, cilantro, pork blood, enoki mushroom, kamaboko, pork slicers, nappa, and tomato. *Whew* What a long ingredient list full of wonderful off beat proteins and I was excited to try them all! Depending on how adventurous you felt, you could ask them to tweak the spiciness level of the soup base from mild to an authentic spice level (which I'm going to guess is incredibly hot). I chose to be somewhere in the middle, as I wasn't in the mood to tempt the fates with the top level of spiciness. =)
So after we made our hot pot selections we added onto our order some extras like more slices of meat, meatballs, fishballs, blood cakes, etc. on the side. It reminded me of ordering dim sum since the menu resembled a dim sum menu, putting the numbers of orders we wanted next to the item. While we waited for our food we grabbed some of the special dipping sauces they had available: Spicy garlic bean paste, garlic creamy soy sauce, and the house special spicy sauce. You could either dip random cooked items in them directly or spice up your hot pot's broth, whatever you felt like! The house special spicy sauce was my favorite, the bean paste not so much...but that's entirely preference because I'm not a fan of beans (don't let my distaste of beans deter you from trying the sauce). I remember the garlic soy sauce didn't really wow me since it was just...garlic + soy sauce, nothing too special.
After a little bit of waiting, the parade of extras started to come out of the kitchen...
Just a friendly bit of advice, if you order the blood cakes don't let them sit around for too long because as we would later find out they have this tendency to um...un-coagulate. X_x
Our table was nearly overwhelmed with the amount of extras! I don't think we were entirely prepared for the onslaught of food, we severely underestimated the amount of food we were going to receive. To make matters worse (or better... ^_^ definitely better) the hot pots then came out!
It was a steaming bowl of pure yummy goodness. To take a quote from Grey's Anatomy, I could see "lines of deliciousness" emanating from the hot pot! My only gripe was that because there were so many components for my hotpot that I only received a small portion of each item (my favorite part was the blood cakes). Everything still tasted amazing though, all the flavors worked really well together, and honestly we had a bunch of random supplements to add on to what we purchased so I wasn't too upset about not having more blood cake, meatballs, fishballs, etc.
Onto the stinky tofu, why we actually came here! It actually didn't have as offensive of a smell that I thought it would possess. It was actually a very mild odor, faintly smelling of gym socks (the best way I can describe it). The taste was like one of those smelly cheeses, it wasn't that off putting, it just tasted like a mildly aged cheese but in the form of tofu. It wasn't bad by any means, but it seems to be more of an acquired taste.
By the way, don't worry about losing your soup base to evaporation because one of the waiters will happily come by to replenish the supply. My boyfriend was slightly miffed when I had them refill his soup while he was off in the restroom because I diluted all the concentrated goodness that the proteins and veggies had imparted. Whoops... ^_^() The same applies if the fire underneath the hot pot seems to go out. I know we ran out of sterno at a few points and the waiters were more than happy to relight the fire.
Overall we had a fantastic time at boiling point. The food and service were great and the price was right! If I didn't have so many other places that I plan to visit my next trip out to California, I'd definitely stop by and eat here again. <3 Boiling point, keep on doing what you're doing.
Boiling Point153 West Garvey Avenue
Monterey Park, CA 91754-2801
(626) 288-9876
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