Hits the Spot

What: Various menu items
Where: Emerald Chinese Restaurant (Mississauga)
Cuisine: Chinese
Affordability: $10+ per dish

Pointers:

If you are craving greasy, salty, and overall bad for you Chinese food that’s good, this is for you.

We were craving deep fried pork belly but all the regular Filipino restaurants in Mississauga that we would trust to eat at has already closed for the night. We ended up at Emerald, which someone recollected to have deep fried pork belly so we gave it ago. This place hit the spot, alright! The pork belly had crispy skin but had a moist and succulent meat. Paired with fried rice and scallops, we were convinced that the badness in all of this was good. We also had the corn soup, which was just really there to start with. We were here for the grease.

Would we recommend Emerald? Sure, especially if you had been drinking. You need the grease to dilute the beer anyway. Just go with the expectation that service may be slow. Different servers were serving us and that may have confused who was ordering our food in the kitchen and who was bringing it out.

Afghanistan Cuisine

What: Boldac Kabab
Where: Kandahar Kabab
Cuisine: Middle Eastern
Affordability: $10+

Pointers:

– Good spot for lunch but try to arrive on time. It looks like it’s a favourite lunch spot for local office dwellers in the area so do consider that.

– I ordered the Boldac Kabab which consists of grilled lamb chops, a skewer of Kofta Kabab (you have a choice between chicken or beef – I had the beef), rice, salad, naan bread and two types of dipping sauce – spicy and cool ranch. The lamb chops were really good and I could eat more of it. The beef Kabab was perfectly grilled so it was still juicy and flavourful. It’s quite a big serving so don’t waste your time with the salad. I only had the cucumbers and the tomatoes to cool off the spicy dipping sauce I added to each bite. I’m not often a fan of spicy sauces just to add flavour and the kababs don’t need it, but it explodes with flavour with it. So I suggest you try. It’s not just chilly spicy, there’s really other spices in it.

– Will I go back to Kandahar Kabab? Probably. I recommend it. It is halal and they grill it in plain view so keep that in mind too. Make sure you have enough time to line up, get your kababs grilled to perfection, then sit down to eat. They serve the meal in proper china and cutlery! Better yet? Eat with your hands with the naan. But if you are wearing a suit like the guys in there at lunch, maybe use the cutlery provided.

 

Dosas…Just Yummy Dosas

What: Vegetable Spring Dosa (above) and Masala Dosa (below)
Where: Guru Lukshmi (Mississauga)
Cuisine: South Indian/Vegetarian
Affordability: $10 – $15

Pointers:

– We ordered two types of dosa: Vegetable Spring, which was highly recommended by our host (in mild) and the Masala Dosa (also mild).

– The Dosas come with three different dipping sauces ranging from not spicy to really spicy. Since we ordered mild, they gave us the coconut base one and coriander. Let me tell you that we were glad. The Dosas were spicy enough by themselves. The sauces, although tamed the spicy-ness, didn’t take away from the flavours that Guru Lukshmi prides themselves of – South Indian cuisine! It also comes with tomato lentil soup that we enjoyed dipping our Dosas in.

– Dosas are meant to be eaten with your hands so don’t ask for cutlery. Mind you, they brought us some in case we didn’t know how. Thankfully, we did and enjoyed our food much more.

– We enjoyed the potato fillings inside as it was moist and a perfect compliment to the paper thin crispy and chewy dosa crepe.

– We really enjoyed the tomato lentil soup so we ordered Medhu Vada (pictured below) as well. It’s deep fried lentil doughnuts with the tomato lentil soup poured all over it. This had an interesting texture but was okay nonetheless. One tip tho, eat if while it is still hot. It gets soggy when cooled down.

– Overall, we enjoyed our Dosa experience. It reminded me of my breakfasts while working in India. Will definitely come back and try other flavours.