Seafood Paradise

At a time when social media has become a hype echo chamber for restaurants – even “hidden gems” influencers “don’t want to gatekeep” – it’s hard to find an Orange County restaurant that’s criminally underrated or unknown. But we have one for you: the Chinese restaurant Seafood Paradise dates back to the 1980s, has no social media presence, and serves really quite good dim sum.

While Seafood Cove 2 is better known, better reviewed, and pretty much guaranteed to have a long waiting line after 10am, Seafood Paradise offers the same dim sum carts, a surprisingly larger selection of choices, and abundant seating indoors and outdoors. What it lacks in Hong Kong-style cosmetic splendor, it makes up for with dishes that (as far as we sampled) were equivalent or superior to Seafood Cove’s, including fresher-tasting king-sized har gow, delicious glutinous rice and pork “footballs,” and solid steamed pork ribs.

Items such as shrimp seaweed rolls, oversized baked egg yam buns, fried shrimp/crab claws, and sweet sponge cake are compelling and only found at Paradise, not at Cove 2. In our view, that’s not a reason to visit one or the other, but rather a great reason to alternate between them.