Meizhou Dongpo
High-quality, authentic Chinese food in a sophisticated Irvine dining space
As the single Orange County location of a Beijing-based chain, Meizhou Dongpo defines “premium Chinese restaurant” – a phrase that in many U.S. cities is either an oxymoron or has a very different meaning than in Irvine. Opened in 2017, four years after its first U.S. restaurant in Beverly Hills, Meizhou Dongpo spent years as one of several Chinese options in a single Irvine shopping center, Culver Plaza. Smaller and more exclusive than local heavyweight Sam Woo, it focuses narrowly on roasted meats and Sichuan food, each at a higher price point, served in a quieter and more elegant dining room.
Richly decorated using an atypical restaurant color – blue – with dark wood bookshelves, tables, and chairs, Dongpo is known for its imperial-class take on Peking duck, which arrives with atypically delicate crispy skin and moist, tender meat, ready to be placed in crepe-like pancakes with thin hoisin sauce and scallions.
While the duck is quite nice, we were even more pleased by the restaurant’s hot and “just spicy enough” chili garlic eggplant, and satisfied by its xiaolongbao soup dumplings, Sichuan dumplings, and coconut almond mochi – called “cake” but more like bite-sized slices. Generally attentive and fast service help to justify the price point.
Unlike Sam Woo, which hung ducks on hooks in its windows and chopped them with a cleaver before unceremoniously dropping the bone-in pieces into styrofoam takeout boxes, you can expect to pay $50 for a half Meizhou roast duck – the portion size above, plus one drumstick – and sometimes similarly imperial prices for other items. Entrees range from $17 to $150, though the vast majority are in the $20 range, with soups, dim sum, appetizers, and desserts all running lower.
Given the environment and the overall food quality, this won’t bother most of the restaurant’s target audience when the food lives up to expectations, but one of our desserts, brown sugar rice cakes, turned out to be a surprising $15 and not particularly good. That was thankfully not reflective of our experiences at either Meizhou Dongpo or its recently shuttered Universal Studios outpost, Dongpo Kitchen, which distilled the Meizhou menu into a simpler form for theme park attendees. We’re interested to see how this chain evolves in the future, and looking forward to visiting the Irvine location again.
Stats
Price: $$-$$$$
Service: Table
Open Since: 2013 (LA), 2017 (OC)
Addresses
15363 Culver Dr. Suite 15363
Irvine, CA 92604
949.433.5686
Instagram: @meizhoudongpous