Little Pan Santa Ana — Restaurant in Santa Ana

Wow, there are sooo many delicious dishes with Northern Chinese flavors at Little Pan! Congrats on Little Pan's beautiful new location (two doors down from their prior restaurant). I always feel that I don't have enough room in my stomach whenever I visit or order from Little Pan, but I love their leftovers, so it's not a bad problem to have! Some favorites:

Sweet and Sour Cucumber: refreshing and flavorful - the perfect complement to savory pan fried buns, especially welcome on a warm day.

Sweet and Sour Wood Ear Mushroom: if you like chewy textures, this is your dish! This was one of my mom's favorites.

Spicy Cabbage: if you like to add a little extra heat and spice, this is a delicious choice and will complement pan-fried buns well.

House Special Pan-Fried Pork Buns: juicy and well-balanced pork soupy goodness with a perfectly crispy bottom! I could eat these every day and never get tired of them. Make sure to be careful with that first bite, as these are bursting with hot and juicy goodness. The first time I tried these, I consistently burned myself but it was worth it. Now I know to make an extra small hole (maybe with a chopstick instead of biting into it) to let it cool before diving in, or alternatively, I can let the soup out onto a spoon to sip!

Corn Cheese Pan-Fried Bun: a lovely veggie option with cheesy texture. Not too savory, and just a little bit of sweetness from the corn. If you love cheese pulls, you'll enjoy this one.

Purple Yam Cheese Pan-Fried Bun: this was my husband's favorite! The texture is very unique and well-mixed. The sweetness of the purple yam and the savoriness of the cheese sings in perfect harmony.

Mini Angus Beef Pan-Fried Bun: this new menu item is my new favorite and a must order! Tiny buns (the size of xiao long bao soup dumplings) pan-fried to a perfectly crispy char, with an explosion of delicious beef flavor inside. The bun/wrapper also has a nice bite to it. Absolutely genius!

So happy to see Little Pan's new location and new menu items. We can't wait to come back and try...

Such a bad experience. When trying to place an order online, the website just returned an invalid card error, but somehow still managed to charge my card. And then again with another card. I called, and the guy I spoke to said there was nothing he could do, and couldn't tell me who else to call. Ten minutes later, they poured salt in the wound, emailing me to say that I left an order in my cart without checking out!!!! So I replied to that, and the person who replied suggested that I place a new order. No, I am not going to make the same mistake for a third time. Shame, because I really wanted to try them out before I leave OC.

Edit to respond to the management: The payment processed successfully, so if you didn't recieve it, that is an issue with your site or your payment processor. It is your choice to either create a functional site, use a service that will provide one, or simply not accept online orders at all. Saying that it is a common issue with online orders does not make it okay (or true).

Edited again to add that I was waiting for a reply to my latest email for over two hours, but posting a review got me that reply just 10 minutes later. Not a helpful reply, but... eh, whatever. There are hundreds of restaurants that...

A mid afternoon "snack" on our way home from LA. Wanted something light and selected Little Pan based on Yelp reviews.

A wonderful, chill & cute little restaurant. At 3pm, we had the whole restaurant to ourselves.

House special pork fried buns: totally didn't expect them to be so big! I expected them to be xlb size but they're probably double that. Served piping hot with lots of delectable soup inside. And the meat was also very fresh with natural sweetness. Reminds me of quality I would expect in Asia - a well deserved "A".

Tomato oxtail soup with wontons: soup was a tangy sweet delight. Great tomato flavour but with lots of sweetness, I suspect from other veggies like cabbage and carrots. The soup itself deserves an "A". The wontons were also very good although I expected shrimp, but instead it was pork. That said, the skin was nice and thin, and meat tasted fresh. A strong "B". The weak part link was the chunks of oxtail - they needed much longer braising to soften up the meat. I give them a "B-".

All in all, a very good place for lunch, worth an A-. Definitely worth bringing my...