The long-awaited, and purportedly award-winning, Taiwanese purveyor of beef noodle soup called Chef Hung is now open at Diamond Jamboree in Irvine. I have not tried it yet myself, but my Taiwanese restaurant informant and friend said that it is already drumming up a lot of business. He saw lines out the door.
Service is understandably shaky, he said, as it still seems their soft opening.
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As I noted before, their signature dish is niu rou mian. Better known to
most as beef noodle soup, this is a dish that features a spicy/tangy
anise-imbued broth that's dark as tea, supple hunks of beef stewed till
falling apart, and, of course, oodles of noodles.
In Irvine, niu
rou mian has many interpretations, virtually on the menus of all of
city's notable Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants such as Asian Tapas,
Tri-Village, Chef Chen, A&J, Liang's Kitchen and, most recently, 101
Noodle Express.
How does this one stack up? Comment boards are open to those who care to leave their opinion.
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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.