A Hard-to-Beat Dinner Deal at Asian Tapas in Irvine

If you haven't tried Asian Tapas, our Best Of Issue winner for Best Chinese, this is the time to go (particularly if you're one of the ones that voted P.F. Chang's to win Reader's Choice).

As I promised earlier this week in the Drunk After Work post on the Irvine restaurant, I am dedicating this post to a discovery I made while doing “research” for the Drunk After Work post: they are currently running a dinner special in commemoration of their one-year anniversary. Pick any three dishes for $15.99.

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Yes, you math genius, that works out to $5.33 for an order of the fried pork chops you see above, a mess of spicy-salt seasoned, bone-in planks of hog that for the first few minutes of service, will gush forth with hot, piggy, fatty juices when bitten. And when it cools, you'll want to scrape each bone shard with your teeth to extract every scrap of meat, every bit of that flavor-packed crust.

Then move on to the next dish, such as scrambled egg with shrimp, where, unlike other places I've been, it's a generously proportioned to a 50-50 ratio of both ingredients. Read: they're not skimping on the shrimp. Each spoonful you serve yourself will contain at least one curled-up prawn, drowned in sheets of the still-creamy egg.

Balance your two main courses with a vegetable dish, like the seasonal, vibrant and garlic-flecked stir-fried greens. Or if you're feeling particularly carnivorous, get another meat-based course for that third dish. They have quite a few, including a really great version of everyone's favorite: kung pao chicken.

The heaping bowls of rice aren't included but necessary. Spring the 75-cents for each, why don't you. You're already saving a bundle with the rest.

Last week, a lot of their customers seem to be already aware and were taking advantage of the deal–just about every table had dishes in multiple of three. Do go soon, though. As with life, all good things, and all good bargains, must end.