The Boiler

The Boiler
4665 Chino Hills Pkwy
Unit I
Chino Hills
909-597-9098

I've heard a lot of good things about The Boiler and their steam kettle cooking and decided to go try it. Located in the less crowded half of a huge strip mall, not far from Pei Wei, which is located in the busier half of the strip mall, The Boiler is a unique restaurant in the land of chain restaurants!


For an appetizer I got the Cajun Calamari, $7.95.

This was nothing more than frozen calamari fried up and served. It was pretty good, thick pieces of calamari and a heavy batter that didn't taste Cajun at all. The batter has more of a fried chicken batter than something for calamari.

Fisherman's Chowder, $12.95. New England style chowder with calamari, clams, white fish, crab, shrimp and mussels, with lots of potatoes. This was a very heavy and thick chowder. They could make this a bit thinner and use a lighter roux, because it was more brown than white and I'm expecting chowder to be more white.

The amount of seafood is a joke. I got one mussel, one clam, a very small piece of crab that was still in the shell, two medium sized shrimp, a couple pieces of calamari, and a couple small pieces of white fish. The seafood was fine, nothing great or bad about them. But, come on, for that price this bowl should have been filled with seafood.

Service was pretty good overall. But, they took awhile to get our drinks, after we placed our order. There were only two servers and one was training to cover the 10-12 customers in the entire store. But, that's not excuse for us having to wait so long for water. Otherwise the servers were nice and friendly and they knew the menu. I asked if the Fisherman's Chowder had potatoes and she knew right away that they did. Many servers would have had to go ask.

But, the weird thing is the owner of the restaurant was more concerned about his family and/or friends who were sitting at the counter than paying customers. I rarely saw the owner leave the counter area where his group was sitting. If he really cared about his business he would have been greeting and talking to paying customers who were walking into his restaurant.

I wasn't impressed at all with The Boiler. For the portion size and quality of the food, it is overpriced. I would not come back here again.