Panda Restaurant Group Inc.

Long Beach Lunch: Wa Wa

Not to be confused with the East Coast convenience store chain of the same name, Long Beach's Wa Wa is a quick-n-dirty Chinese restaurant with cheap combo plates and made-to-order specialties that has dragged office zombies out of their Downtown cubicles for more than a decade. The red-and-white til ... More >>

Free Food at Panda Express This Wednesday: Here's The Coupon

If you're reading this, you like free stuff. Who doesn't like free stuff? Especially when there are no strings attached, like this offer for a free Samurai Surf and Turf from Panda Express this Wednesday. With this coupon (click here to print or save on your smartphone), the chain is introducing th ... More >>

Two "Tasty" Restaurants Open; At Least One More In The Works

When it comes to restaurant names "Tasty" is the new "Licious". In Irvine, Tasty Noodle House has opened. The new restaurant, located a few doors down from Panda Express, specializes in the cuisine of the port city of Dalian. It has a branch in San Gabriel known for their pan-fried pork bao and Sha ... More >>

On The Line: Kurt Schaeffer of Back Bay Bistro, Part One

We interview chefs for two reasons. For those already familiar with their cuisine, it gives diners an opportunity to get to know the chef on a more personal level. Those who haven't been to their establishment are able to understand the individual in the kitchen. If they like what they read, it moti ... More >>

The Punishers of 'Universal Soldier 4'

To see the fights, John Hyams' sequel demands you suffer

PART ONE: OC Weekly Best Of Readers Poll 2012: The Good, the Bad, and the WTF?

Today is the release of our annual Best Of issue, our fantabulous guide to all things wonderful about this infernal land. For the purposes of ustedes, you only care about the food section, and you can peruse it here. But what's always interesting to us is the Readers Poll: will our faithful fans be ... More >>

Long Beach Lunch: Taste of India

Taste of India seems to be a catch-all name for West Coast Indian restaurants, like what Ray's is to New York pizza. But unlike all the Ray's that finally came together to form one franchise chain, the Long Beach Taste of India--a tiny corner storefront across from the Willow Blue Line station--rema ... More >>

No. 56, The $7 Three-Item Combo Plates at Yu's Garden

This is not Panda Express. There is no Orange Chicken, no Kung Pao anything. Sweet and Sour? Forget about it. Instead there is chicken mousse wrapped in deep fried tofu skin; bone-in basil chicken in sauce-lacquered pieces; soy-simmered minced pork, the kind that you top rice with; and a mapo tofu t ... More >>

¡Ask a Comida Critic!: How Can I Request a Re-Review?

From Irene in the Land of the Intermittent Showers:My family recently took over an upscale Chinese bistro in downtown Portland, Oregon. We just had our first review by our local free weekly paper, Willamette Week, and it's a bad one. We feel it was not a true and fair review of what we are, and w ... More >>

A List of Food Specials and Freebies on Tax Day!

So have you subscribed to OC Weekly's The Spoon Feed newsletter yet? Do it now by entering your e-mail in that big old red box that you see to the right that says "SIGN UP".I'm subscribed and I got some tips about a few freebies and specials on tax day that I wouldn't have known about otherwise ... More >>

Free Shrimp at Panda Express Tomorrow Today (Wednesday)

​Have you noticed  that every time Panda Express introduces a new dish, they give it away first? You could almost call it the pusher business model: let them have the first hit free, and they'll come back for more.They've done it for every recent product launch I can recall. From the Hone ... More >>

Free Firecracker Chicken Breast at Panda Express On Chinese New Year

​The official line explaining why the Panda Express chain is giving out free food this coming Monday for Chinese New Year reads thusly:"The Chinese New Year's Eve feast features ingredients that carry special symbolic meaning. Firecracker Chicken Breast(TM) is created with chicken because it repre ... More >>

This Week In Food: Shit Vegans Say, New Girl Scout Cookie, Starbucks & Molotov Cocktails

So the first week of January was pretty good to us, food-wise; Star Wars burgers, the best sushi in OC, and famous lesbian movie scenes as depicted by hot dogs. Read all about this amazing week on the blog!

Panda Express' Next Venture: Dry Cleaning

​Not content in making the addictive substance called Orange Chicken available at every airport and mall food court (and yes, even friggin' China), the creators of Panda Express have now branched out into...dry cleaning?

Five Alternatives to California Pizza Kitchen's 1160-Calorie Thai Crunch Salad

Chasen Marshall/OC Weekly​The excellent Men's Health series called "Eat This, Not That" made its bones by mocking the atrocious nutritional bomb CPK sold as a "Thai Crunch Salad." In its original incarnation, it contained 2,238 calories if you added the heart-healthy avocado option.Shamed by this, ... More >>

Pinoy Pam's Best Gets to the Point-Point

Eating Filipino in OC means turo-turo, so go for the latest and greatest in Lake Forest

This Week in Food: Great Pot-Laced Desserts, Cal-Mex, and Mega-Bacon!

Flickr user zieak​As always, so many great things this week we have to give it to you after the jump!

Panda Express Heading to . . . China?

Wiki CommonsPanda Express may introduce the people of China to . . . Chinese food--or at least the American bastardization of it.​First, Taco Bell made its way to Mexico. Now, Panda Express, which we can thank for bringing glazed orange chicken to mall food courts across the country, may find a pl ... More >>

This Week In Food: Pothead Fantasies, Jerk-Ass Burger Hostesses and Wacky Cranberries!

Flickr user Half Chinese​Just like the headline says--and more!--after the jump!

Panda Express Offering Free Food (Today Only!) to Celebrate Chinese New Year

​ If you decide to celebrate Chinese New Year by dining at Panda Express, the ancestors might scorn you from the grave, but just tell them, "It's free!" and they'll likely smile in approval.Today only, the chain is giving customers a complimentary single serving of its Firecracker Chicken Breast, ... More >>

Mila Kunis Yet the Latest In-n-Out Celebrity Endorser

Photo from Wikimedia CommonsKunis​Geez, between Edwin's Heather Graham post yesterday and this one, we're becoming a culinary TMZ! Or not...anyhoo, Mila Kunis is another Hollywood hottie who's appearing in some weird film with Natalie Portman called The Black Swan. I probably wouldn't see it--but ... More >>

Nativo Lopez Cries 'Racist,' Appeals Court Cries 'Defamation'

[Moxley Confidential] Split decision in Overhill Farms case has chilling free-speech implications, dissenting justice asserts

Nativo Lopez Slammed by Court For Calling Frozen Food Company "Racist"

Nativo Lopez​Nativo Lopez, Orange County's most controversial political activist, helped organize a 2009 protest against a Southern California frozen food company and distributed leaflets branding the business a "racist employer" because it fired almost 300 warehouse workers who'd provided fake So ... More >>

Eat Here, Not There: Orange Chicken

Dave Lieberman​This is Orange County. Our best efforts here at Stick A Fork In It notwithstanding, Orange County loves chain food, and we love our comfort food. Even we, your indefatigable food bloggers, occasionally succumb to the lure of the fast food and the national chain.That doesn't mean, ho ... More >>

Aji Limon Is the Chifa Champ

This Buena Park eatery just might be the county's first restaurant to specialize in Peruvian-Chinese food

Buy Me Some Sushi and Cracker Jack

[Summer Guide] A rundown of the best non-chain eats at the Big A

Racist OC Register Fustercluck of the Day

​Headline: Worst teen job market in 41 years swankey1 says: So iam at Panda Express with my GF , she asked for fried rice and the Asian working the counter yells back , Fried rice POR VAVOR !! WHATA F!@#$ !!! We walked out !!

Alice Waters Speaks At the LA Times Festival of Books

Doyenne of the locavore movement, defender of the schoolyard organic garden and quintessential Berkeleyite Alice Waters spoke at the L.A. Times Festival of Books yesterday morning. A crowd of nearly a thousand gathered to watch her present, completely extemporaneously, a series of demonstrations on ... More >>

Chinese, Part 1

Entire years, entire careers, entire lifetimes have been spent writing about Chinese cuisine, and yet it's arguably the cuisine least well-represented in the vast bulk of America. As hard as it to hear, the Chinese food that comes delivered in those little white Tetra-Paks™ with the red pagodas an ... More >>

The Five Hardest Foods To Give Up For Lent

tea_time @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-SA 2.0​Ash Wednesday, lovingly known as Dirty Forehead Day, is this week. For Christians, this marks a time of penance and sacrifice before Easter. One of the common practices is to give something cherished up during Lent. Some things are very easy ("I won't eat frog ... More >>

Jersey Mike's To Open in Irvine

​Our friend Brekkie Fan tipped me off to a Jersey Mike's opening right underneath my nose.  But it's even more notable because the chain's seventh store in O.C.is taking root in a shopping center that's practically a ghost town these days. The once thriving Irvine minimall, at the corne ... More >>

Cafe Rio Opens In Lake Forest

Edwin Goei ​Cafe Rio, that Utah chain I mentioned in past posts, debuted this week in Lake Forest. But, alas, I was a touch too early to try them. I took the picture above just days before they officially opened, but now that they have, I'm curious on hearing about anyone's who's tried it, e ... More >>

Edwin's Top Five Dishes of 2009

John Gilhooley​You've read Gustavo and Dave pick out their Top 5 Dishes of '09. Now it's my turn! At first I thought this would be an easy task, but it is not. To pick out just five dishes out of the hundreds I've sampled this year is like asking a toddler to choose only one toy -- he'd rath ... More >>

[Hole in the Wall] Korean-Chinese Fusion Fun Time at Young Pung

Bird Cage Theatre's Annual Productions at Knott's Get to the Heart of What the Holidays Are About

Benihana--You Knew This--Sucks

The greatest shame of my life is that my siblings--raised on the stove of a Mexican mami--loves crappy food. The eldest son of the Arellano clan has covered food for the Weekly for more than six years, knows all the great joints in Orange County--but they prefer Papa John's. I urge them to visit Ruf ... More >>

[This Hole-in-the-Wall Life] Mad Mongolian at Mad Wolf Mongolian BBQ

Garden Grove's Warung Pojok Is the Best (And Only) Indonesian Joint in OC

Warung Pojok: New Indonesian Eatery Opens in Garden Grove

When Asian Deli skedaddled to Diamond Bar a few years ago, it left Orange County deprived of its only Indonesian restaurant. The nearest alternative for hungry expats existed just beyond the Orange County line, at Toko Rame in Bellflower. Meanwhile, in O.C., Indonesian food remained the Rodney Dan ... More >>

[Food Issue 2008] For Our Recessionary Times, 54 Orange County Meal Deals Between 99 Cents and $15

Boneheads in Lake Forest May Be a Chain, But It's a Good One

Sucking in the '70s

The grub at Wong’s is sublime, if you don’t mind dangly tassels

Sun, Fun and Felonies

A summer sampling of one week in Orange County crime*

Moo Shoo Muslim

Sister Jamillah returns with Mas Islamic Chinese Restaurant

Diary of a Mad County

Record of the year?

La Habra

Good Food, Bad Food

A tale of two Woos

Battle of the Strip-Mall Chinese Restaurants

Plowing through the suburban-sprawl experience