I think I've dubbed Irvine O.C.'s unofficial Taiwan Town before. But I'll say it again now, because along with the recent Taiwanese additions such as the second Class 302 at the Irvine Marketplace, Meet Fresh at Diamond Jamboree, and so many others I don't feel like listing because I'm actually under the weather as I write this, there's now a Kingchops planned for the city, next to Clay Oven at the corner of Irvine Center and Jeffrey.
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Kingchops is apparently a fried pork chop specialist and is actually from Taiwan. They already have a branch in the City of Industry that serves pork chop rice (Pai Gu Fan)–basically a plank of deep-fried pork served with rice dotted with soy-sauce-seasoned ground pork, veggies and a hard-boiled egg. Also on the menu there and most likely at this store when it opens: pork chop noodles, either served dry or submerged in soup.
Will it open sooner than the Taiwanese popcorn chicken specialist called Popcorn Chicken, which is also slated to a few blocks away? We shall see. But it doesn't change Irvine's unofficial designation as O.C.'s Taiwan Town.
*Thanks to our tipster and friend for the photo and this tip.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.