Lee’s Stonemill Rice Roll is a Food Court Gem

Lee's Stonemill Rice Roll
Location
: 1000 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga (inside Yuan Ming Supermarket)
Website: https://www.leesriceroll.com/

Lee’s Stonemill Rice Roll is a great food court eatery that specializes in — you guessed it — rice rolls.  The rice roll plates here mostly cost seven or eight bucks, which made me think they were going to be way smaller than they were.  It’s a great deal.

Lee's Stonemill Rice Roll

I tried the house minced pork and egg rice roll, the beef brisket rice roll, and an order of the scallion pancakes.

Lee's Stonemill Rice Roll

Both rice rolls were really tasty, particularly with some chili oil drizzled on top.  The dish features thick rice noodles topped with various meats, with the noodles having a nice chewiness that complements the meaty toppings quite well (both the minced pork and the ultra-tender brisket were great).

Lee's Stonemill Rice Roll

The scallion pancakes were a bit dense, but still quite enjoyable — and at $4.25 for a decent amount, a solid deal.

Tasty Basque Cheesecake at Tea One Bakery and Cafe

Tea One Bakery and Cafe
Location
: 900 Rathburn Road West, Mississauga
Website: https://www.instagram.com/teaonebakery/

Though Tea One Bakery and Cafe has a whole bunch of tasty looking Chinese-style buns and pastries, they also have a whole display case filled with a variety of Basque cheesecake slices.  Clearly, that’s the thing to order.

Tea One Bakery and Cafe

Basque cheesecake, for the initiated, is a crustless cheesecake with a dark, caramelized top.

Tea One Bakery and Cafe

I got a slice of the original, and wow, it was good.  It had a perfect texture — nice and creamy, and just set enough.  It’s incredibly rich, but the relatively restrained sweetness and tart flavour does a great job of balancing things out.

Tea One Bakery and Cafe

I’m going to have to come back and try some of the other flavours, because it was legitimately one of the better slices of cheesecake that I’ve ever had.

Baked Salted Caramel Pie at McDonald’s

Baked Salted Caramel Pie at McDonald's
Location
: 1500 Dundas Street East, Mississauga (inside Walmart)
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

I’m going to try not to spend this entire review complaining about how McDonald’s used to fry their pies, resulting in a golden, satisfyingly crispy exterior, and now bakes them instead.

Remember how good the fried pies used to taste?  No, you don’t, because the switchover happened back in 1992, and you weren’t even born when it happened??  That’s extremely upsetting to me, but yeah, fair enough.

Baked Salted Caramel Pie at McDonald's

Well, the fried pies were good.  And you don’t need a time machine to discover this for yourself — basically every other country in the world still serves their McDonald’s pies fried, and it’s a million times better.  Why we still have to put up with gummy, tasteless crusts despite the fact that the low-fat diet craze that spawned this change has been gone for decades is a mystery that will eternally haunt me.

Baked Salted Caramel Pie at McDonald's

Oh, did I say I wasn’t going to spend this entire review complaining about the crust?  Well, I lied.  Otherwise, this is basically fine — it tastes like an apple pie that’s all goo, no apples, with the slight hit of salt making it a bit more interesting.  But seriously: why are we all putting up with the fact that the pies at McDonald’s are terrible when they don’t have to be???

Black Truffle Burger at Shake Shack

Black Truffle Burger at Shake Shack
Location
: 100 City Centre Drive, Mississauga (inside Square One)
Website: https://shakeshack.ca/

The last time I tried Shake Shack, it was during their collaboration with Mimi Chinese; it was thoroughly delicious.

I went with their latest special on this visit, the Black Truffle Burger (“Gruyere cheeseburger topped with black truffle sauce made with real black truffle oil and our crispy sweet onions on a toasted potato bun”), and it was… not thoroughly delicious.

Black Truffle Burger at Shake Shack

I find it kind of hilarious that they boast that this is made with “real truffle oil,” as if that means anything.  Seriously: don’t make me tap the “the vast majority of truffle oils have never seen a truffle in their life, and are artificially flavoured to taste vaguely like a truffle” sign.

Black Truffle Burger at Shake Shack

No, I’m not a fan of truffle oil — though I will say that its flavour here isn’t too overbearing, and is mostly balanced out by the crispy onions and the tasty cheese.

This should have been a decent enough cheeseburger, except the star of the show — the beef — was surprisingly bad.  The patty had a decent beefy flavour, but was very dry and disconcertingly crammed with crunchy gristly bits.

Black Truffle Burger at Shake Shack

Shake Shake is ostensibly about higher quality food than big chains like McDonald’s or Wendy’s, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had beef this bad at either of those places.

Unusual (but Satisfying) Shawarma at Shawarnado

Shawarnado Shawarma
Location
: 4870 Tomken Road, Mississauga
Website: https://shawarnado.com/

The chicken shawarma wrap from Shawarnado is… odd.  Tasty, but odd.

I guess when you think about it, the tastiness is all that matters.  Is it checking the boxes I expect from shawarma?  No, not really.  But it does taste good, so sure, I’ll allow it.

I ordered the chicken shawarma wrap with everything (except onions, because raw onions are for jerks), which comes with garlic sauce, spicy garlic sauce, tahini sauce, and hummus, along with a whole bunch of veggies — including some unorthodox choices like green peppers (?), shredded carrots (??), and corn (???).

Shawarnado Shawarma

No, not exactly shawarma standbys, but with the deluge of tasty sauces, they mostly just add texture.

I asked for it extra spicy, and yeah, it definitely had a nice kick to it.  Between that and the generous amount of zippy and rich sauces, it pretty much can’t help but be a tasty wrap.  Those sauces didn’t quite taste like what you’ll normally find in a shawarma wrap, but whatever they were, they were good.

Shawarnado Shawarma

The chicken came out of a warming tray instead of being freshly shaved — never what you want to see — but it wasn’t dry at all, even if it had absolutely none of the crispy bits that typify great shawarma.  It actually had a texture that was closer to pulled chicken than traditional shawarma, but again, with all that tasty sauce, it was fine.

The whole thing was so unusual that it reminded me more of a burrito than traditional shawarma, but hey, it tasted good, so I can’t exactly be upset about it.