Taiwanese hotpot comes to town
The Chinese love for hotpot is often compared to the Westerners’ love of steak. There is no wonder that we have so many different styles of hotpot restaurants in Shenzhen — coconut chicken, mutton hotpot, and brand-name chain stores like Haidilao.
The Chinese love for hotpot is often compared to the Westerners’ love of steak. There is no wonder that we have so many different styles of hotpot restaurants in Shenzhen — coconut chicken, mutton hotpot, and brand-name chain stores like Haidilao.
Now, we have a newcomer. Taiwan-style hotpot Boiling Point has opened its first Shenzhen outlet at Coastal City in downtown Nanshan District.
Featuring the one-diner one-pot practice that’s easily accepted by Western people, the chain store started with a small Taiwanese hot soup (that’s the more familiar word to the Western ear) restaurant in California in 2004. With 20 outlets across the United States and Canada, the Shenzhen outlet is Boiling Point’s first try at the Chinese market.
Featuring simple modern American-style décor, the restaurant at Coastal City resembles a loft design studio. The restaurant offers 10 different hotpots. The seafood and tofu combination, with ingredients like sliced pork, enoki mushroom, iced tofu, calamari, clam, cuttlefish rings, fish fillets, fish balls and vermicelli, is a popular and healthy choice. Typical northern Chinese-style lamb hotpot has sliced lamb, kamaboko, pork blood, sour mustard greens and tofu. There are also the Taiwanese spicy hotpot, Japanese miso hotpot, Korean bean paste hotpot and a very special pomelo flavored hotpot. Vegans can choose the organic veggie hotpot that features carrots, tomatoes, seaweed, broccoli, tofu, pear, various kinds of mushrooms and vermicelli.
Those who are courageous and willing to try new tastes can order their house special hotpot that features fermented tofu, pork intestines and pork blood, quail eggs, salty vegetables, tomatoes and meatballs. Touted as their must-try, the appetizing fermented tofu is said to have been produced by a certified factory in Taiwan, hand brewed from naturally fermented vegetables with no preservatives. To go with the hotpots, the restaurant also provides a chili bean sauce, a garlic soy sauce and an extra piquant sauce. (Debra Li)
(Edited by Stephanie Yang)
