About a year ago, Koko's Cafe closed after about three years in business serving what was, at the time, the only Hong Kong-style cafe food in Irvine. It closed because, presumably Tasty Garden opened a few blocks down and ate up all the Hong Kong-style cafe food business. Koko's was soon replaced by a restaurant called Li's Kite. Li's Kite served beef noodles. Now Li's Kite is also gone, replaced by another eatery called Long's Kitchen.
]
From what I saw of the menu, Long's Kitchen also seems to be a noodle soup specialist. The first thing on the list is niu rou mian, braised beef noodle soup, which judging by how many restaurants offer it in the city, must be Irvine's most popular noodle soup, easily besting ramen and pho. But Long's also offers a lamb stew noodle soup and another soup that suggests its cooks are from Hunan.
Let's hope that Long lasts, er, longer…
Follow Stick a Fork In It on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook! And don't forget to download our free Best Of App here!
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.