Shanghai

Din Tai Fung Is Coming To South Coast Plaza

Oh, yes. Din Tai Fung, purveyor of the famed Shanghai-style xiao long bao soup dumplings that burst in your mouth upon consumption, is coming to South Coast Plaza. Arcadia's Best reports that the 8,000 square-foot restaurant won't be here until April 2014. Sigh. Still, SCP sounds like an ideal spo ... More >>

Eat This Now: Salted Egg With Bitter Melon & Scrambled Egg at Tasty Noodle House

Tasty Noodle House's specialties are vast and all-encompassing. There's everything from Shanghai soup dumplings to stinky tofu to cold noodles slicked oily with peanut sauce. There are delicate, greaseless fried fingers of fish seasoned with seaweed and snakegourd simmered in a thickened clear gravy ... More >>

Saveur's "150 Classic Recipes" Has Unexpected Depth

Have you seen what Saveur has done? To commemorate their 150th issue, they've put out an indexed list of "150 Classic Recipes" from old issues. Normally, this wouldn't have gotten my attention. I figured it'd have, you know, the usual mac-n-cheese, Zuni Cafe's roast chicken, yadda yadda. But wh ... More >>

Great Park Indie Film Series Opens Tonight with Shorts and Ends Nov. 15 with Fishbone

Independent cinema seems to be popping up everywhere, even in an uncompleted park that remains Orange County's largest public works project.Witness the weekly Independent & Inspired Film Series, which debuts this evening at the Orange County Great Park, skips a Thursday (Oct. 11) and then picks ... More >>

Apartment in Athens, Nazi Drama from Italy, is Big Winner of Newport Beach Film Fest Awards

Wait, there's more: And the Other Newport Beach Film Festival Awards Go To . . .Apartment in Athens was the big winner of jury awards at the 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival, which officials say was attended by about 52,000 patrons between April 27-May 3, about the same as last year. Weekly picks H2 ... More >>

And the Other Newport Beach Film Fest Awards Go To ...

As you can read here . . .Apartment in Athens, Nazi Drama from Italy, is Big Winner of Newport Beach Film Fest Awards. . . NBFF awards have been dished out for the weeklong cinextravaganza that ended Thursday night. But, like American television producers, I feel even more awards need to be bestowed ... More >>

The "World's 50 Best" List Is Published, Is Usual Steaming Pile of Irrelevance

Oh, look, this year's edition of "The World's 50 Best Restaurants", sponsored by San Pellegrino and its subsidiary Acqua Panna, has come out. Cue the precious online debates and the bored yawns from the rest of the world.Ranked lists of the best anything are patent bollocks: they necessarily reflec ... 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 >>

Newport Beach Film Fest Opens Tonight, But You Never Would Have Thunk It Days Ago

The week-long 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival opens tonight with a Big Newport presentation of Jewtopia, one of 16 world premieres at the 13th annual event, followed by the boozy, schmoozy opening night gala at Fashion Island.However, to be in the busy festival offices across from John Wayne Airpor ... More >>

Newport Beach Film Festival's Social Network

A curated sample of socially relevant offerings at the 2012 festival

Ten Great Chinese Restaurants in Orange County

​Orange County doesn't have the San Gabriel Valley, lined end-to-end with great Chinese restaurants. We do, however, have Irvine, which is where most of these recommendations are, and where you can eat well from just about any region of China.As with all these sorts of lists, there will be the ine ... More >>

CNNGo Publishes First Ever Worthy National-Media List of Chinese Restaurants

​Whenever I read a best-of list in the national media, I wince internally. They're usually either cobbled together by looking at the Internet and seeing which ones are mentioned most often--which results in a kind of small-scale Zagat guide, prone to the hype machine--or they're put together by pe ... More >>

Jollibee Sign for Anaheim Location Up!

Hope the Chris & Pitts sign it replaced is being taken care of--but it's probably in a landfill :-(​Maybe it's only me and Edwin who are totally pumped about the Filipino fast-food chain Jollibee coming to Anaheim, but whatever! We're nerds for Filipino food, which doesn't nearly get enough ma ... More >>

On The Line: Wing Lam of Wahoo's Fish Taco, Part One

Photo by Meranda Carter​One-third of the founding brothers behind Orange County's quick-casual eatery simply known as Wahoo's is not just On The Line, but on the go. We accompany Wing in the carpool lane one afternoon as he reflects on his education and passion for cooking to the masses. Buckle up ... More >>

Author Lisa See

Newport Beach Library

Ajisen Ramen Busted By Chinese Authorities For Lying About Soup

Photo by Keith May​Typically when you hear about food scandals in China, it's dire stuff, dangerous stuff that endangers lives. This one, by comparison, seems like a minor drop in the bucket; but it is making waves just the same. Ajisen Ramen, the giant ramen chain which has 588 stores in China (a ... More >>

American Airlines Now Sponsoring Fortunes in Chinese Fortune Cookies

​Two nights ago, my family and I went to Shanghai Palace in Torrance to celebrate my dad's birthday. As we reached the end of the meal, the waitress handed us our obligatory fortune cookies. Exciting! As I opened up the plastic wrapper, I wondered what fate would be revealed on that two-inch white ... More >>

Soup Dumplings in Mini-Tart Tins: Why Hasn't Anyone Else Thought of This?

​Ocean Star, in LA's new Chinatown in Monterey Park, now serves Shanghai-style soup dumplings, called 小籠包--xiao long bao. The problem with most services of soup dumplings is that they arrive four or eight to an order still in the steamer basket, and the act of transferring them to a spoon, d ... More >>

Mall Food Court Turo-Turo: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Dave Lieberman​I don't know why it never occurred to me that Filipino turo-turo ("point-point") food is a perfect fit for a mall food court. You almost never see Filipino food in malls, even though you see takes on Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian.

Cirque Shanghai Bai Xi

Cerritos Center

Chinese, Part 4

I desperately wanted to do a piece on Qinghai food in the area, given the news recently; I figured they may have relatives back home to support, but unfortunately Qinghai is not renowned for its food; not a single place could I find that sells niangpi (dough cakes) or caterpillar fungus (ranked with ... More >>

Deep End Dining's Eddie Lin's First Book Out In Stores Today

Photo Courtesy of Eddie Lin​You may have seen, heard, or read Eddie Lin before. That was him you saw chomping pig's ear and nibbling crickets with the jolly-Buddha-meets-cueball Travel Channel host Andrew Zimmern on the Los Angeles episode of Bizarre Foods. That was him you heard regaling NPR li ... More >>

Disneyland Suits Offered Buyouts

Things are tough all over--even the Happiest Place on Earth.Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is offering buyouts to 600 executives in its theme parks in Anaheim and Florida and the Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, reports the Business Journal's Orlando and Los Angeles outlets.More than half of the buyouts a ... More >>

[Special Screenings] Local Showings of 'Big Wednesday,' 'Back to School,' More

Grub Guide

Tasty morsels from the county's best damn dining guide

Friday's Headlines & Surprises: Excessive Force?

Shoot 15 times, ask softball questions later: The parents of Ashley MacDonald, the 18-year-old Huntington Beach girl killed by two police officers, filed an excessive force lawsuit yesterday in U.S. District Court, according to Christine Hanley at the Times. According to their suit, Kenneth MacDona ... More >>

Special Screenings

Movie of the Week: Caddyshack

Tuesday's Headlines & Surprises

Top U.S. Secrets to Crooks, Idiots and Dopers: The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., reports this morning that the Pentagon, the guys running the Iraq War, now want Congress to allow national security clearances for government employees who are “ex-convicts, drug addicts and mentally incompeten ... More >>

Special Screenings

Movie of the Week: Superstar in a Housedress

Ten for the Money

There are more than 182 features at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Here are 10 weve seen

A Great Mystery

Many of the artisans are anonymous, but the influence of "Treasures From Shanghai" is undeniable

Cock & Bull

Eating bull penis at Pho Nguyen Hue

Grub Guide

Tasty morsels from OC's best damn dining guide

Twisted Sister City

Irvine shanghais Taiwan

Irvine Wants Communist $$$ for the Great Park?

The controversy surrounding Irvine's new "Sister City" relationship with Communist officials in Shanghai and the bizarre snub of democratic Taiwan began with numerous "irregularies," including breaches of protocol, "odd" outside influences and possible "deliberate deception," according to a June ... More >>

Cruise in Control

The Syracuse kid saves the world in style

Grub Guide

This Week in Numbers

Grub Guide

This Week in Belated Happy Lunar New Year!

Google Dolls

The other day, while getting the website that mirrors your favorite OC alt.-weekly pub ready for ya'all, Clockworken noticed something interesting upon opening Gustavo Arellano's popular column !Ask a Mexican! (Special Cesar Chavez Edition). Along the top of the virtual page was a Google advertiseme ... More >>

This Hole-in-the-Wall Life

369 SHANGHAI:

1, 2, 3 Eat

New Film Reviews

Bluffmaster, Wolf Creek, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Fun With Dick and Jane, Mrs. Henderson Presents, The Ringer, Rumor Has It, The White Countess

This Week in Picking Restaurants by Pointing Blindly at My Computer Screen

This Week in When Will China Crush Us?

Chi' Chinese Acrobats

This Week in Roughage

Eight Days

Genetically Modified Desire

In Michael Winterbottoms Code 46, science decides who you love

Whos Your Daddy?

Its Rebecca Schoenkopf!

Dog Day Cafe

Stephen Lemons Lies Down with Dogs and Gets Pleased

I Cover the Waterfront

Love and mermaids in Suzhou River

Ethnic Fare

Foreign films survive Newport festival shake-up