LOC Noodle& Dumpling Bar 原味·缘 — Restaurant in Ladera Ranch

So. I don’t really know where everyone who is actively enjoying this experience here are getting their tastebuds but this establishment left me disappointed.

Upon entry this place smelled as if the bathroom was left wide open. We were greeted to and attended to very promptly and everyone was nice. The atmosphere would be 5 stars if not for the fact that the bathroom smell lingered the entire time there.

I ordered the popcorn chicken, the special pork baos, beef noodle soup, and the chocolate buns. The beef noodle soup came out first, with three pieces of beef (sliced very thin), two pieces of bok choy(not fully cooked through), flavorless noodles and some murk broth. This dish needed some salt, (which was not available on the table) and the only thing that could be tasted was the chili oil you had to pour into this dish.

I got the popcorn chicken and it smelled so strong, almost as if they wanted to mask the taste with the smell. It was dry inside, lacked flavor other than the sauce they pour all over it, and was tasteless.

The Baos came out almost room temperature and were about the average size of other places. Upon trying them, they tasted as if they were just microwaved. I would have been better off grabbing some from the local Trader Joes and heating them up myself. Out of the 7 or so they gave us, we only ate three, leaving the rest.

Ultimately the chocolate buns seemed like the only thing that was truly “homemade”. They were very hot, sticky, and oozed the chocolate sauce inside. The bao itself didn’t taste like much, and the chocolate sauce inside tasted like dollar store dark chocolate and was very bitter, and not a good dark chocolate bitterness.

The Thai iced tea was reviewed previously and was said to be “not too sweet”. I would say the initial sip had that “not too sweet” taste and the rest tasted as if it was a pure aftertaste of the tea, almost if they just dyed the water orange.

Overall the experience left me sad because we shelled out around $75~ dollars for tasteless food, having to pay and add tip before getting the food.

P.S. don’t touch the chili oil bottles, they’re very sticky and make sure to look at the soy sauce bottles closely, they reuse some bottles and out vinegar inside instead...

Our first visit to LOC was a take out order of 3 items: Garlic Eggplant, Shumai and Wonton Noodle Soup. The only really good item was the Garlic Eggplant, although it was very oily. The Wonton Noodle Soup was very disappointing. The wonton dumplings were good but the broth was cloudy and tasted like it was made from a powdered mix and overall it looked absolutely nothing like the photo on the menu — no vegetables at all and all noodles. But the real tragedy was the Shumai (AKA Siu Mai). I have ordered Siu Mai every time I have dim sum, for close to 60 years, and the very traditional dish is an open face dumpling filled with a mixture of ground pork, ground shrimp, mushrooms, water chestnuts and spices. The version of “Shumai” served at this place is filed with RICE and only rice, no meat at all. It was heartbreaking and downright insulting to customers who think they’re getting an authentic Siu Mai and are presented with tasteless balls of rice stuffed into a wrapper. And since we love real Siu Mai so much, we got two orders of the rice-filled imposters only to be hugely disappointed when we got home and inspected what we actually paid for! Needless to say, I would never return to this restaurant and do not recommend...

How in the world can this place have a 4.4 rating ..? I had high hopes for this place , being near us in Ladera Ranch . However, this was one of the worst Chinese restaurants I have visited in recent memory, and I’ve been to many Chinese restaurants all over the world.

To keep this short..the noodle soup was the worst I ever had... the "beef" if you can call it that, was around 90% fat, and totally inedible. It looked like the type of lousy beef you could get at a terrible shabu-shabu restaurant. Needless to say, we ate none of the "beef" supplied in our soup.

The hot and sour soup was not much better … it had so little ingredients in it, and mostly water. There was no tofu slices in the soup , and after 1 ladle put into each soup bowl, the rest was basically a brownish , sour liquid with a few pieces floating around in it.

The Xi Lom Bao was so-so , and always tore open when we tried to lift them...we have had so much better than this.

Overall, very sad , as we were looking forward to a good place for noodle soup, Xi Lom Bao, etc. nearby. But we will have to keep visiting Irvine, SC Plaza, etc.. for these dishes. We do not recommend this place , and will never return to it...