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| - GTA is well known for their Asian cuisine and places like Red Lotus only reaffirm that there's great Asian dishes to be had in the GTA.
While I've had a variety of different Chinese cuisines, Sichuan is right up there simply because I love the taste, the spice and the style overall.
I ended up dining with a couple that really know this place since they are regulars and have a list of approved staples for sampling. We ordered a good mix of dishes from two types of dumplings, Dongpo pork joint, spicy chicken bamboo and beef roll, and beans, family style.
The pork was tender and broken up into smaller pieces, small enough so that we'd be able to pick them up. the entire dish was glazed in a tasty and tangy sauce.
The chicken bamboo was basically a stir fry with bite sized chicken pieces and a mix of vegetables and hot peppers. While the presentation was nice it was sort of hard to get the food out of this cone shaped container. The peppers while hot added a nice crisp and texture to the dish. For me they weren't too hot to eat by themselves although I could see my wife not being able to eat them with or without the other items in the dish.
The beef rolls were in a flat bread rolled almost looking like a burrito but it was cut into pieces like a sushi roll. The beef had a sweet taste but the wrap was really good. It looked grilled on a pan, warm and slightly toasted. The taste sort of reminded me of siopao but the bread wasn't soft and fluffy but rather flatter and dense.
The dumplings were good, pork one with bok choy and the other with green onions. The beans were amazing. Crumbled meat mixed with fresh veggies... a bit salty but I loved the taste.
Overall Red Lotus has a very large menu with selections for just about everybody. Not everything is going to be spicy peppery hot as not every dish is like that, some yes but not all. We had a good choice of meats and flavors to try and between the 4 of us that had dinner we ordered appropriately for us (6 dishes, individual bowls of rice).
Red Lotus is good Sichuan in central Mississauga.
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