CHD Korean Dumplings

With multiple locations in South Korea, as well as Los Angeles-based food truck and brick-and-mortar options, Chang Hwa Dang Mandu operates in Orange County as CHD Korean Dumplings, with mini-restaurants inside two H Market Eatery food halls in Irvine H Mart supermarkets. The first CHD opened alongside Northpark’s H Mart in 2023, while the second replaced Westpark H Mart’s Korean soup and stone bowl restaurant Woomiok in 2024.

CHD’s menu includes around 40 choices, starting with a dozen different dumplings – steamed or fried – plus three types of steamed buns (pork, kimchi, or sweet red bean), 10 different tofu/rice yubu pockets (fish, meat, or egg), 13 noodle and rice dishes, and four types of tteok-bokki. When we asked, they said their five “cold noodle” bowls are not naengmyeon, but rather a different type of noodle; they also offer fried rice, fried noodles, udon, and wonton noodle soup.

We went straight for their mandu sampler, which includes 10 total pan-fried pork, kimchi, smoky sweet pork, shrimp, and jalapeno dumplings – nearly enough for a full meal at $15 – and seriously enjoyed all of them, though there were a couple of especially excellent flavors: the smoky sweet pork was (wonderfully) more smoke than sweet, and the shrimp were loaded with full pieces of shrimp, sticking out of the dumpling wrappers on both sides. Even the jalapeno pepper dumplings were bursting at the seams, and packed with flavor and texture.