Boiling Passion

**** Boiling Passsion has closed

Less than a week ago, I mentioned a new hot pot place.....Boiling Passion. It just so happened that one of our coworkers; "Lily" was transferring departments, so we wanted to take her to lunch. And BP seemed just the place.

I like what they've done to the interior; brick and wood paneling...nice job considering how quickly the place got turned around from Pho Paradise's closing.

A quick look at the menu revealed that yes, this is indeed what Eater describes as a "take off" on the very popular Boiling Point. Hot pot for lunch? $12.99, for dinner, $13.99. You can add extras for an additional charge, but I found the portion size to be quite generous.

We each got a different version of hot pot; "PL" got the "House Special Hot Pot", basically stinky tofu.

While the amount of protein in the hot pot isn't substantial; the overall portion size is. In addition, we were asked several times if we wanted our broth topped off. In spite of this being "stinky tofu", this wasn't very pungent, the flavor quite mild overall. But at least it wasn't too salty.

Three sauces are provided, the bean curd based sauce is the best overall.

"YZ" got the Korean Style Hot Pot.

One interesting thing to note.....the heating gel used is pretty potent and very hard to control. "YZ" broth kept bubbling up and she had to hold up a napkin to avoid getting splashed.

I got the Lamb Hot Pot, which, according to Lily should have had suan cai. The stuff in my hot pot tasted like plain napa cabbage, lacking in any fermented flavor and not even close to the suan cai we make at home.

The lamb was very tasty and gamey, the mung bean noodle, which I chose instead of rice wet quite well in this along with the enoki mushrooms and tofu. I'm not a fan of blood cake, but I really like the version served here, nice texture, ever so slightly sweet without a strong metallic flavor. I do wish the broth had a bit more flavor though. Along with one fill up of broth; this was more than I could finish.

So what about Lily? Well, the point of this lunch was to chat and enjoy so I took only one shot of every hot pot. As you can tell, it came out much too blurry. Lily ordered the winner of the bunch the Ma-la Hot Pot, which had a nice spice; not super spicy, but quite flavorful. She gave me a nice taste in one of the bowls provided.

Kind of a bummer that the photo of the best item of the day didn't turn out.

Luckily, John and Candice had some time to grab dinner and with the weather unseasonably cold, hot pot sounded like just the thing.

We started with "Golden Dumplings" - fried bread. I really haven't had a good version of this since we last ate at Kingswood in Rowland Heights nearly a decade ago. This was served with condensed milk.

This was very light and lacking in the nice mild sweetness I enjoy.

Candice ordered the Curry Hot Pot which was decent and John the Sate....which must have been good, because he basically destroyed it. I was having such a great time chatting that I forgot to take a photo of the Ma-la Hop Pot, 'doh, lightning strikes twice. So you'll have to settle for this photo and basically take my word or it that this is pretty much the way to go here.

As an extra bonus, I noticed that this came with some intestine....something I really enjoy. Heck, even the fish balls tasted pretty good here. Wish they had a bit more bean curd skin though.

Well, I'm just going to have to drop by again...probably soon if the weather holds its course. As of this writing, I probably enjoy the hot pot, well at least the hot and spicy version (the rest are on the bland side) here more than QT Pot, though I need to revisit them soon. The folks here are nice and since it's grand opening trying real hard. Candice recognized one of the owners as previously working at Noble Chef. I hope they do well....check them out and let me know what you think!

Boiling Passion
3904 Convoy St
San Diego, CA 92111

 

Comments

[MrZ]

I once went to the nearby Boiling Point with two coworkers. One of them decided that the heating gel was heating his soup too hot; us being engineers he said, "Well the more I eat the hotter it gets, since it's a constant heat input to less and less mass." So he took his drinking straw and tried to blow the fire out. We discovered that doing that only fed more air to the heating gel, causing a nice light show. Eventually he kept blowing and got it to burn out, but by that time his soup was basically the temperature of lava. He had to "suffer" through the rest of his meal, stopping after every spoonful to wipe off his brow.

He later found out that one can ask them to not light the fire under the bowl.

[Jason]

I'm definitely intrigued, will give them a try one of these weekends.

[kat]

Hope they can keep it up.

[Junichi]

Interesting. It sure is hotpot weather the last few days. Will give it a try.

[Kirk]

That's funny MrZ - More oxygen means fuel to the fire!

Check them out Jason!

I do too Kat!

Try that Taiwanese Spicy Hot Pot Junichi.

[Kirbie]

The amount of ingredients in the pot seem a lot less than Boiling Pot and other chains in LA. I'm still looking for one to open in SD where it's a mountain of toppings like the ones in Taiwan. haha. But I am glad to see a new one open. Last time we were at QT Pot and it was pretty disappointing.

[Kirk]

No Kirbie - Not in the same league as Boiling Point. I think the Spicy Hot Pot is the one to get....the rest are kind of mundane.

[Joleen @ Joleen Cuisine]

Whooaa those "golden dumplings" bring back memories of huge family dinners with relatives in Taiwan. One of my favorites we would always order. Tried this place tonight and thought it was pretty decent considering I really haven't explored many of the other hot pot places in SD and it's been YEARS since I last had Boiling Point I can hardly remember anything about how the soup tasted (other than that I ordered curry soup and asked for mild but ended up getting super spicy I couldn't even get through a quarter of the bowl...hahhaha) But perhaps I'll have to give Boiling Point another try when I'm back in OC for a full comparison. But still, like Kirbie said, nothing beats the ones in Taiwan.

[Kirk]

I do think Boiling Point is better Joleen - the only hot pot I can recommend is the ma-la version