O’Shine Taiwanese Kitchen

It would be an understatement to say that we’re disappointed by the closure of O’Shine Taiwanese Kitchen, which served one of our favorite and most unique meals of 2022 before closing in 2023. O’Shine had moved around over the years from Irvine (1996) to Tustin (2015), then eventually landing in Lake Forest (2021), where it briefly seemed to have settled – though not without challenges.

On the night we visited, a seemingly deranged person got into a fight with the owner over refusing to pay for soup she disliked, forcing the owner to call the police. We could tell the otherwise empty business wasn’t thriving in this space.

From what we gathered, its success had nothing to do with its menu or food quality, and everything to do with location. As contrasted with Taiwanese spots in Irvine, which tend to overlap significantly with northern Chinese cuisine, O’Shine’s menu felt different: We could even find colorful ba-wan sweet potato starch/pork/mushroom dumplings and translucent oyster omelettes that are as delicious as they are rare in Orange County.