Boiling Point's Thai-Taiwanese Combo Soup

By Barbara Hansen Tue., Jul. 24 2012 at 9:00 AM

Categories: Eat This Now, New Restaurants, Thai Cuisine

Barbara Hansen

Boiling Point Thai Flavor Hot Soup

Is it Thai, or is it Taiwanese? It's both. We're talking about the Thai Flavor Hot Soup at Boiling Point, a Taiwanese soup chain with several Southern California locations, including a new one in San Gabriel.

You might think you're in Hollywood's Thai Town when you taste this sweet, sour, spicy, salty concoction. But the flavorings were blended for Boiling Point in Taiwan. They go into a stock based on beef bones and vegetables.

There's a little pork in the soup, but mostly you get a bowl full of calamari, clams, shrimp, crab and Foochow-style fish balls stuffed with minced squid and pork, as if you were eating by the beach in Thailand. It's not all meat and seafood, though; mushrooms go into the pot too.

Boiling Point soups stay bubbling hot until you finish, because they come on individual burner units that can be reignited as needed. As for hot, as in chiles, you get to choose. "No spicy" is for wimps. "Mild spicy" is pretty spicy, which means "flaming spicy" must be so fiery there may be nothing to rival it this side of Thailand.

Barbara Hansen

the new Boiling Point location in San Gabriel

Read more from Barbara Hansen at www.EatMx.com, www.TableConversation.com, @foodandwinegal and Facebook. Want more Squid Ink? Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.