Boiled Fish bubbles over with bold broths that bring the zing

Boiled Fish found its way into my regular restaurant rotation, and I have my endodontist to thank. Or the location of her office anyway. It sits less than a four-minute drive away, so every time I'm subject to a session of dental poking and periodontal buggering, I turn to Boiled Fish's gorgeous bowls of boiled fish, which prove to be as palliating as a shot of Botox for my bruxism.

Easy on the teeth? You bet. The plush chunks of basa ($16.95 small; $25.95 large) or sea bass ($21.95 small; $33.95 large) teeming amid one of seven different broths pose no danger to the pearlies. The broths have one thing in common: sauerkraut. Well, it's called "sauerkraut," but the sour tang in the pork-based liquid actually comes from pickled mustard greens, as is custom in Chongqing and Sichuan Province.

And in the case of the "lemon flavor sauerkraut fish," there's a citrusy zip and a scorching stab courtesy of chopped red and green chilies. It's my new favorite soup, and I've enjoyed it with both basa and sea bass fishies. Lolling in that zingy pool of golden fire were bean sprouts, napa cabbage, tofu, tofu skin ribbons, wide vermicelli noodles and wood ear mushrooms. Now if you saw that sticker price and winced, it's probably because you're not aware of how large this "small" bowl of soup actually is. Two people could share this thing, no problem. I don't know how much soup the large bowl holds, but I imagine it would feed a family of four easily.

click to enlarge

photo by Rob Bartlett

The broths are all made fresh daily by a trio of women — Christine, Lily and Lena — who also own and operate the restaurant. Christine, an expressively buoyant proprietor, suggested I try the "green pepper sauerkraut fish," whose flavor comes not from bell peppers, but green Sichuan peppercorns. The first few bites expectedly numbed the tongue, but that's all it really did. The monotone profile didn't exactly lend a whole lot of flavor variety, like in the lemon soup. Or the "tomato sauerkraut fish" for that matter — this red-hued beauty is the mildest of all the soups offered, but it arguably imparts the most comfort. The sweet, sour and impossibly luxuriant composition is hardly the dismissively "mild" option I thought it would be.

When I went back for my third and most recent visit, I noticed the menu had expanded to include a lot more items: Hunan-style stinky tofu, soup dumplings, coconut shrimp, meat and veggie skewers and scores more. Among them, superb fried gyoza ($6.95) that surprised me with a tofu and scallion stuffing. We thought it was chicken. The bracing cucumber salad ($7.95) never disappoints, and neither does the crispy chicken ($7.95) tossed in five-spice powder. But if there's one chicken dish to order, make it the cold chicken with chili sauce ($13.95), a Sichuan specialty that Christine insisted I try.

I never fail to temper the heat with house-made passionfruit lemonade ($6.95) and a capper of brown sugar glutinous rice cakes ($4.95). That ending may lead to yet another visit to the endodontist, but I'm not overly concerned. Not when I know it'll also lead me back to Boiled Fish, where the soups are, in a word, toothsome.