Red Lotus - Web site:

Red Lotus is a Chinese restaurant in Mississauga that specializes in Sichuan cuisine. It is one of my family's favourite restaurants to visit and I've been trying to review it for months. Somehow, timing never worked and my parents always went without me. The one time we did try to stop by, the restaurant was closed for renovations. Finally in August, the stars aligned, renovations were done and I got to douse my taste buds with Sichuan peppercorns.

Good if you like it spicy. If you can handle really spicy Szechuan food (so like spicy+tingly/that numbing feeling in your mouth) then you will love this place; albeit they sort of over do it with the szechuan peppers (which gives you that numbing sensation), the taste is okay, but after 3 bites it's spicy will be all that you can taste from that point forward. Their spicy blood stew is nice, with quail eggs tehe

Szechuan food has been a bit of a tough sell in Mississuga, and I've seen plenty of Northern Chinese places come and go in this town over the years. (This is slowly changing with more immigrants coming from mainland China than from Hong Kong, but I digress! Red Lotus has been the longest lasting, and it's well-deserved. These guys know how to use their peppercorns, garlic and chilis.<br/ <br/ Northern Chinese standards like boiled dumplings, ma po tofu, hot and sour soup and dan dan noodles are orthodox and delicious. As with most Szechuan restaurants, however, Red Lotus' achilles heel is the tricky xiao long dumpling. It needs to have a thin, soft skin that's tough enough to lock in scalding hot soup, and Red Lotus' come slightly cold and lacking in juice. If it's not causing second-degree burns to my chin, it's not a proper xiao long dumpling. (Make the drive and brave the lines at Din Tai Fung in Markham to get a good one, but I digress... Nevertheless, for this type of Chinese food, Red Lotus is the best in Mississauga.

This newly renovated restaraunt is an excellent place to stimulate your taste buds. The vast menu contains spicey szechuan treats that will keep you going back week after week. Try the house specialty, hot pot fish. It seemed that every table had this dish on it. It is so tasty.