Mississauga’s food scene is a reflection of the city itself: sprawling, diverse and shaped by generations of newcomers who have brought their cooking traditions with them. From Pakistani karahi and Palestinian falafel to South Indian dosas, Egyptian comfort food, Indonesian specialties and hand-pulled Chinese noodles, the city is packed with restaurants serving food that rarely feels generic or watered down. Our team of 11 food experts selected the spots below as being extra special: they made our Top 100 Under $100 guide to delicious, affordable restaurants in the GTA. Here are some of Mississauga’s standouts. Let us know what you think.
Butt Karahi
Address: 3015 Winston Churchill Blvd., units 7-8 (at Dundas St. W.) and other locations
Contact: 416-494-5477; buttkarahicanada.com
Even amid Mississauga’s vibrant Pakistani food scene, this family-run spot shines. It’s the offshoot of a Lahore mini-chain dating to the 1970s. The recipes, passed down through generations, shape a menu of hearty, shareable dishes. The chicken malai boti is a good place to start: marinated breast turned tender and smoky in a charcoal-fired tandoor oven. The chicken arrives hissing on a hot platter, strewn with caramelized onions, its nicely bitter char softened with the creamy cashew marinade. The Butt Special Chicken Karahi, by contrast, is a robust curry in tomato-forward gravy; its flavour builds in layers rather than all at once. It arrives in a wide metal karahi pan, slicked with shimmering oil and topped with peppery ginger. Tear off a bite of garlic naan to scoop it up. (As with many of the dishes here, a half portion is good for two, even three.) Save room for the veal pulao, an aromatic rice dish built on fennel-spiced meat broth. The long-grain basmati is lightly glossy with veal fat yet remarkably light — the kind of celebratory dish usually reserved for feasts. —Akrit Michael
Falafel Plus
Address: 1065 Canadian Place, Unit 133 (at Tomken Rd.)
Contact: 905-867-6650; falafelplus.ca
Hisham Amleh has spent his adult life fixated on falafel. In Hebron, where he grew up, his mother made them green and fragrant with parsley and coriander and more than a dozen different spices. She always cooked them fresh, no sitting around, so their delicate shells burst with savoury chickpea and herb-garden steam. At Amleh’s stellar all-day breakfast and falafel spot, he’s honoured that food memory, and then some. He does his falafel strictly fried-to-order, for peak texture and flavour. For a delicious variation, you can get them stuffed with tangy, sumac-spiked onions as well. But the breakfast dishes here are every bit as great. The fattet samneh layers Amleh’s superbly smooth and fresh-tasting hummus — spiked with lemony green chiles — with soft, whole chickpeas and yogurt, so it’s extra creamy, with fried almonds and super-rich ghee over top. There’s shakshuka, and charred eggplant mutabal, plus omelettes, salads and excellent, earthy-lemony-garlicky foul mudammas, which combines long-stewed whole and split fava beans; it’s complex and satisfying. The thick, fluffy pocket breads here — pita-like khubz — are baked in-house; there aren’t many shortcuts to Palestinian cooking this good. —Angelyn Francis
Guru Lukshmi
Address: 7070 Saint Barbara Blvd. (in Derry Village Square)
Contact: 905-795-2299; gurulukshmi.com
As with any thrill ride, you may spend longer getting to Guru Lukshmi and waiting for a table than actually eating your dosa. At least you’ll have time to study the menu beforehand, a 43-page (!) PDF that surveys nearly every corner of South Indian vegetarian cuisine. There are the fried lentil-flour doughnuts called vada, steamed rice idly cakes (the toonie-sized minis are superb, drenched in ghee and sambhar, the tangy lentil stew that acts as a sidekick to nearly everything on the menu), and at least 10 different categories of dosa, the specialty here. Order a paper dosa: a golden cone of fermented rice-and-lentil batter, crisped in ghee and curled until it’s roughly as long as a cricket bat. Though there’s any number of fillings available, they’re typically savoury and at least a little fiery, like the Mysore Bhaji, built on potatoes, roasted garlic and chili paste. Each bite is a study in texture and heat, and after a dunk in the cool tomato, coriander and coconut chutneys that come alongside, temperature, too. No fire is too great to be put out by a glass of shikanji — the savoury, supremely refreshing lemonade spiked with cumin and black salt. —Alex Baldinger
Masrawy Egyptian Kitchen
Address: 2275 Britannia Rd. W., units 1-2 (at Millcreek Dr.)
Contact: 647-654-4444; masrawykitchen.com
This regal and family friendly spot has one of the largest Egyptian menus in the GTA, spanning grilled skewers, layered rice and pasta dishes, sandwiches, dips and meal-sized soups. Its fans have been following owner Mohamed Salah Saleh’s cooking since he began as a caterer in 2014. Start with kobeba: hot and crispy croquettes of ground beef, bulgur and nuts drizzled with lemony tahini. The mombar are also excellent, dill-flecked rice in natural sausage casings, seared to delicately blistered and juicy, cooled with a yogurt dip. Veg dishes are equally tantalizing — the ultra-creamy and garlicky lentil soup, for instance, blended with carrots and onions for a sweet finish. Save room for the sharing platters. The lamb shank fatta comes braised and roasted to fork-tender, on fluffy rice and crunchy baladi bread croutons that soak up the lamb drippings and the bright tomato-based sauce. To end, there’s kunafa: angel-hair strands of golden pastry sandwiching pastry cream and lightly sweet syrup, topped with crushed pistachios. —Karon Liu
Samara Kitchen
Address: 6033 Shawson Dr., Unit 13 (at Britannia Rd. E.)
Contact: 647-772-3130
This 14-seat gem does real-deal Indonesian cooking for Indonesian patrons — for everyone else, it’s hard not to feel lucky just to take it all in. Samara’s menu runs from sweet grilled meat skewers to coconut milk curries, complex stews and expertly wok-fried noodles and veg. The batagor dumplings make a great start, their savoury minced fish interiors wrapped in crispy, golden-fried tofu skin, topped with chunky peanut sauce and a drizzle of dark, sweet kecap manis soy. They’re nutty, salty, just a little sweet, made for impulsive eating. The bakso rodal features an enormous stuffed meatball resting in an aromatic clear broth, with noodles, crisp celery and fragrant fried shallots; delicious. If you don’t speak Indonesian or Malay, a bit of smartphone menu decoding is rewarded here. The kangkung belacan is one such prize: crunchy water spinach stems wokked with funky-spicy fermented shrimp paste. Also excellent: the mild sambal chili-paste-smothered fried “smash chicken,” and the lontong sayur coconut milk curry served with cubes of compressed rice. For dessert, don’t miss the best-in-town es cendol, an iced fruit, coconut and caramelized palm sugar drink that’s lushly tropical-tasting, laced with the grassy, floral notes of pandan leaves. —Jennifer Chan
Sun Chinese Cuisine
Address: 3480 Platinum Dr., Unit 110(at Ridgeway Dr., in Ridgeway Plaza) and other locations
Contact: 905-828-9090
If you’re mesmerized by the open kitchen’s noodle master, who deftly twists, slams, stretches and folds blocks of wheat dough into armloads of metre-long lamian, you won’t be the first. Hand-pulled noodles, offered at this busy Mississauga specialist in nine different shapes and thicknesses, are a staple in Chinese cooking; the Langzhou-style beef noodle soups that anchor Sun Chinese’s menu are perhaps their most famous iteration. Here, they come in broad bowls of clear chicken and beef broth that’s rich with the scent of cinnamon and star anise, topped with braised beef, vegetables and chilies. The noodles soak up the umami-rich soup, turning red and slick with chili oil. Start with the regular thickness as a baseline before working your way to the “flat, very wide” ones that offer a completely different experience: They’re chewier and thicker, with a texture that allows them to hold even more broth. Don’t hesitate to slurp; the servers have plastic bibs ready. Pair the noodles with grilled lamb skewers, a cool cucumber salad or niangpi, a cold and silky appetizer of, yep, noodles tossed in sesame dressing. —Karon Liu
