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| - The Red serves Sichuan Cuisine, a province in southwestern China. The flavours are often bold and spicy with liberal use of aromatic ingredients like garlic and pungent ingredients like Sichuan peppers. While Sichuan (AKA Szechuan) is often synonymous with super spicy food, the dishes really have several distinct flavours, some of which are not spicy at all. The flavours are: hot, sour, sweet, pungent, and salty. Yes, salty on purpose, can you believe that?! There are also different levels of dishes to Sichuan food, ranging from food snacks to gourmet banquet dishes.
The Red is more on the lower end of the gourmet scale, covering snacks, household dishes, and popularized dishes. Located in Unionville, The Red is east of Markville Mall in a plaza with ample free parking. The decor is modern and the noise level was average. Embracing new tech, ordering is done via tablet like many of the Japanese Sushi AYCE places.
The Red served a huge array of dishes, but we were primarily there for the street meat! The snacks, small plates, or Chinese tapas if you will. They had no shortage of variety here, and their menu even had some dishes from Shanghai. On the menu for tonight was xi?olóng b?o (little dragon buns); beef rolled pancakes; Beijing (aka Peking) duck; sweet spare ribs in casserole; chicken wings with hot black bean sauce on sizzling hot plate; fried chicken wings; fried green bean with ground pork; Deep fried Chinese handmade buns; Sauteed beef with black pepper sauce on sizzling hot plate; gan guo chinese cabbage and pork; pan fried silver pancake; and puff pastry with filling.
There are a lot of plates, so I will be as brief as possible hitting only the major points of each.
Xiaolong bao. A Shanghai dish of steamed pork dumpling with soup inside each one. The truck to this dish is getting a really thin dumpling shell. The Red did a decent job, being better than most dim sum restaurants, but not quite as good as at Ding Tai Fung (First Markham Place). 3,5 stars.
Beef Rolled Pancakes. Another Shanghai dish, a thin crispy pancake with beef, and the rolled. Slightly salty, slightly sweet and greasy, the trifecta for comfort food. 4 stars.
Beijing Roasted Duck. A northern Chinese dish usually served as 2-3 dishes. The main is the duck skin and flesh served with soft flour wraps with cucumber onions, and Hoisin sauce. The second dish is usually a stir fried dish with the inner meat of the duck with vegetables. Lettuce is use as the wrap for this secondi. If there is a third dish it will be in the form of soup made with the bones and whatever meat they couldn't remove. Here at the Red, it was a two course Beijing Duck. The skin was crispy and the duck was not too fatty, the way I prefer, but not authentic (Authentic China ensures the duck is very fatty, and is not consumed very often) whereas here we tend to consume much more frequently so we've adapted the dish for the same of our health. 4 stars.
Deep fried handmade buns. These are made by pulling dough over and over to create thin strands, then shaped into a bun and deep fried. It's served with condensed milk. The bun was fine, the right consistency and texture. The condensed milk was very sparing and if now quality. 2 stars.
Sweet Spare Ribs. Served on a cast iron plate the ribs were not fall off the bone, but were moist and tender. 3,5 stars.
Sautéed beef on sizzling hot plate. A popular Chinese dish, it was on par with most restaurants. Onions, peppers, mushrooms, and beef stir fried with black bean sauce. Not a spicy dish, but flavourful. 4 stars.
Fried chicken wings. A small plate, I actually didn't get to try this as they were all gone before I had a chance. A favourite among the kids. Their review: 5 stars. But honestly, you can't really go wrong with fried chicken wings. The flavour would be my determining factor for the rating, but even a simple dusting it with garlic salt would suffice.
Fried green bean with ground pork. We were actually looking for long beans as that is normally the dish with Sichuan, but this place made it with green beans, not sure if it's due to availability, price, or just catering to the local crowd. The beans were slightly overcooked, and the dish not very spicy. 2 stars.
Chinese cabbage and pork. This was something I never had before. Ground pork, fungus, cabbage, and hot peppers stir fried. Similar to the second course of a Beijing duck where it's served with flour wraps. While the dish wasn't bad, I think it lacked depth when it came to flavours. There was also very little in the way of sauce, further depriving my taste buds. 2,5 stars.
The puff pastry. An egg based pastry that slightly resembles the texture of a French Cruller (which I love) and filled with red bean paste. It's topped with glazed and icing sugar. The dough was a little more moist than I prefer, but the taste was pretty good. 3,5 stars.
3,5 stars overall, rounded down to 3. I think they did a good job on the small plates, I'd stick to them.
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