Red Lantern

The «Meet Pancake» is pretty good! It came with 12 pieces, and was a nice filling lunch. The pork filling is the same as the filling you find in dumplings. The lady was pretty nice, and even let me snap a picture of the pancake before she cut it. She also gave me an entire bottle of vinegar since it was almost done, which I thought was funny. Overall, will return!

I actually ate here not making this the destination, but because of visiting the vendor next door to even notice this place. I didn’t use the trusty Unilocal app and even read Marc D’s review and magically ordered the same thing he wrote about (meat pie), I guess Unilocaler’s think alike, and I waited patiently for this dish and decided to read the ‘other’ review on this place and after reading it started salivating on what I was going to sink my teeth into.
In big red Chinese letters stating ‘RED LANTERN’ wasn’t what brought me here, and oddly enough I didn’t really look up at the few pictured items, with the pork meat pie priced at $ 6, to make me order this, I actually looked through their smaller pictured item menu below, and I was drawn to this thing, way more than the onion pancake. In Chinese, this thing was called the Beijing meat cake (I think this is the closest I can describe this as) and something about meat between doughy pastry that is cooked fresh was what I was searching for on this wet and soggy day.
The woman who took my order spoke Mandarin to me, and my horrible Steven Chow Mandarin/​Cantonese tried to order this dish, successfully I might add. Sitting in the food court I waited for about 10 minutes, it could have been longer, I wasn’t counting, but what I did know was that this thing was being made fresh on that grill, covered, and cooking hot. When the dish was ready, she eyed me, and said to come over to get my food, served on a tray, she asked if I would like vinegar, and I had a small plastic dipping dish for this, even though I did not know if it would go well, but if they are already serving this with it, I might as well take it.
The size of this thing was almost like a personal sized pizza, it was not try, as most of the sauciness was oozing from the freshly cooked meat sandwiched between the pastry. The meat was juicy, moist, hot, homey with the pastry just made it feel like you were somewhere in Northern China, whether this dish was served in a restaurant or the back of an outhouse, this dish would be great. Not much on presentation, but once you have a bite, everything feels warm. Dipping each bite with the dark vinegar enhanced the taste, and my partner had to ask the woman working to reload on the vinegar as what we got was not enough. While sitting in the food court I noticed other people ordering this dish from this stall, obviously the more popular of plates.
I will definitely come back, and order this, and have more confidence trying their other things but one to put on my radar, and a reason to come to this food court.
Oh, and Marc D. the answer to the name of the dish is like what I said: Beijing Meat Cake is what the translation word to word is!

* Meetpie *
Yes, meetpie. Not meatpie. That’s what the few words of English on the menu said. And when I say few words, I mean few words.
This stall, which is just a few down from O’Tray, looked promising from the front with its extensive Chinese language menu (
). I worked my way through it and settled upon the «meetpie» for a reasonable $ 6. The owner seemed to think it was a good choice and told me it would take 10 minutes to make.
After precisely 10 minutes the bell rang and picked up my meetpie. It was a large one, completely filling the large plate. Photo:
It came with a side dipping dish of vinegar.
The piping hot crust itself had a nice chew, was crisped up nicely, and was filled with a flattened out version of a typical xiao long bao filling — minced pork with a hint of ginger and green onions — and a LOT of juice. The meat was moist, well seasoned, and delicious. The vinegar really highlighted the flavours nicely. The crust soaked up the juices from the plate and made this all around a very good dish. Photo:
I’d love to know the name of this dish, as it was the first time I’ve had one quite like it, and somehow I don’t think it is called «meetpie!»