Sam Woo Restaurant Seafood & BBQ Express
The king of Orange County Chinese food, cut down by the tax man
Should someone ever compile a list of the most regrettable culinary crimes ever committed in Orange County, the closure of Irvine’s Sam Woo Seafood & BBQ Express has at least two opportunities to appear and rank prominently. A single large space divided into two businesses – a semi-fancy Hong Kong-style Chinese restaurant with a seafood-heavy menu and morning dim sum carts, plus a take-out-only barbecue and combo meal space – Sam Woo routinely opened to long lines for both weekend dim sim and weekday BBQ side lunches; arriving well before the doors officially opened was practically mandatory to avoid extended waits.
While one could reasonably debate whether its 2021 food quality was up to snuff with prior years, there was no question that Sam Woo’s Chinese-American menu, ambience, and dim sum offerings were practically unrivaled in Orange County. Even as the service went from prickly to more prickly over time, Sam Woo rarely descended to China Garden levels of outright abrasiveness to guests, ensuring continued demand even in the wake of a global pandemic.
Irvine hasn’t yet recovered from the first culinary crime: Sam Woo’s abrupt December 2021 closure and inauspicious 2024 replacement with a bank rather than a similar alternative. Since the only other Sam Woo/SW Seafood location at Orange Tree Square folded back in 2018, the original space’s shutdown left the city (and its immediate neighbors) with no truly great Chinese restaurant. Though neighbor 99 Ranch has stepped up a little with its own barbecued meats and affordable lunch combos, they haven’t matched Sam Woo’s. But according to reports at the time, the closures may have been the result of another set of crimes: roughly seven years and $3 million worth of tax evasion and insurance fraud.
For now, the closest way to experience Sam Woo again is in Cerritos, right on Orange County’s border, where a very competent dim sum-heavy cafe recently opened near Lunasia – a smaller and more focused take on the Sam Woo with locations in L.A. county. It remains to be seen whether a similarly ambitious Chinese place appears again in or near Irvine.
Stats
Price: $$$
Service: Table service
Open Since: 1993
Closed: 2021
Addresses
15333 Culver Dr.
Suite 720
Irvine, CA 92604