Diamond Jamboree Shopping Center — Attraction in Irvine

Excellent place for food. However, the parking is atrocious during busy hours. Busy is usually during lunch rush hours and most of the evening during dinner. Good luck finding parking (the parking structure gets packed too) during the peak times. I work literally across the street so I get there before the rush to try everything out. If you're nearby and hardcore with your group of friends, probably best to Uber and go on a food hop between all the restaurants there. My favorite places in no particular order are Kicking Crab (medium kickin flavor shirmp, clam, and potatoes), Pepper Lunch (classic pepper beef with their sweet sauce bottle on the table), Yigah (short rib soup), Saigon Pearl (pho), Meet Fresh (their signature dessert and wintermelon tea with herbal jelly), Coco Ichibanya (so much customization and the spiciness can get real. love their keema fries), Hai De Lao (pork bone broths. very pricey), Chef Hung (lunch specials. i prefer thin noodles and if their soup is bland, let them know and ask for some soup base), Lollicup (strawberry yogurt green tea 75% sweetness. the most excellent trained staff i've seen at a franchised tea place), 85 Degrees (sea salt jasmine green tea), Capital Seafood (the most expensive dim sum ever in their to go area when I am craving it badly), Kura Revolving Sushi (fun experience and fair prices/quality. try it at least once), BCD Tofu (medium assorted soon tofu), and H Mart (there's a small food court in there as well). The other places, BBQ Chicken (i do love their red hot sauce. damn spicy), Urban Seoul (always felt it was too greasy), Tokyo Table (lol), Ajisen Ramen (better places in surrounding cities that are worth driving to), and Paper Lantern (stop calling them "XLBs"...tasty beef wrap though) are just okay to me. Overall, great selection and lineup. Parking can become a nightmare. You can enter from McGraw Ave and drive past the huge Korean church to access the parking structure. Or you can try the main entrance at Millikan and Alton. Have fun driving through H Mart's parking lot with entitled suicidal inattentive shoppers darting out in front of the path of your car. R.I.P SWSH...

I was driving by this place one evening at night. I had never seen it before. Darkness filled my starship's viewport. Then, like a miracle in the night, I came upon this neon wonderland. I was driving fast and I passed it quickly. I didn't know what it was, but I'd have to return.

Return I did with the Wife. Oh, what a nice mistake. She fell in love with the place and we've been there at least once every couple of weeks for three years now.

The main draw for her.. err.. US is the 85°, the H-Mart and BCD. My wife is a member of the cult known as The Foodies. For her, the sea salt coffee and a pastry from 85° is heaven on earth. She enjoys cooking Asian food from scratch and H-Mart is her go-to for Korean ingredients or for less expensive Japanese equivalent ingredients. BCD is great at any hour. We've been there at 3am before. I don't know why, but we were.

Me? I'm along for the ride. Every. Time. I do enjoy the people watching, though. Plus there are a couple of good geocaches in the center. Geocaches should reset like dailies or something, but that is a rant of a different color and for a different day.

It is crowded and difficult to find parking on weekends and especially weekend evenings. If you go to 85°, try the Sea Salt Coffee and tell them Ako sent you. They don't know who Ako is, but tell 'em anyways. What...

I was looking for a Coco curry house to eat at since I had not eaten at one in about eight years. I found one here and quickly and so many other great eating choices.

This place was like heaven for me. The place is packed with 5 star restaurants, bakeries, desert places, and little stores on the first floor. There was a nice high end liquor store upstairs and another eatery.

Needing some nail work or plastic surgery? That was on the second floor too. Go ahead honey, I’ll be trying to eat a little bit at all the places downstairs while you go get even more beautiful.

Parking can be a pain, but there is a huge parking garage behind the building for the facility.

There also some other places on the out skirts of the parking lot but I didn’t have time to make it by all of them. You can easily spend a long afternoon here.

I’ll be back...