Trieu Chau Restaurant — Restaurant in Santa Ana

If there is ever a place I can safely say is my number one restaurant in all of the US, it would have to be this place, Trieu Chau. Yes, I am highly biased as this is the place my parent's would take us to growing up as kids and still continue to today. That childhood nostalgia and pure foodgasmic joy experience from each and every meal here is simply priceless.

Their noodle soup, is something I have not tasted anywhere else. Theirs is the best. My usual go to is either the #19 - Chao Chow or the #21 - Chao Chow with duck. Order some of their #05 - fried dough also to dip in your noodle soup and you will quickly find your place in a food heaven of flavors. Be warned, sometimes the fried dough sells out so come early. Today we also ordered the #01 - fried crab and shrimp ball, not my favorite, but a lot of my family craves this dish with a passion, and the one that they make here is superb. Another favorite here (I don't know which number) is their chow fun type stir fry dish with mix of beef and seafood (similar to pad see ew dish if you are familiar with the Thai variant).

There was about a 20 minute wait for our party of 4 to get a table on this Sunday morning around 10am. Service is always impeccable and efficient. My noodles quickly were absorbing all my soup and pretty soon I could not see much soup left. Asked the wait staff if I could get a small bowl of more soup stock and we quickly got that right away. Top notch place, with our 30+ years of loyalty of dining here year over year, we will continue to come here for many more years come. Try for yourself, you will not be disappointed.

P.S. Google has this categorized as Vietnamese, but I feel it is more closer to a Cambodian, Chinese,...

My family and I have been dining here FOR GENERATIONS. Literally my parents immigrated here and took my brother and sister here when they were a young, new family. Now my sister takes my nephews here and they love it. I've introduced my wife to Trieu Chau and it's easily one of her favorite restaurants (and mine too)!

I've ordered the same 3 bowls over all these years, but now I only order their trieu chau wonton exclusively these days. The other 2 was the meatball (only) and hu tieu thap cam bo. Wife orders the same as me, except I do pho noodles and she does wide/big rice noodles.

Their broth is exceptionally savory with deep, comforting flavors, balancing between savory and sweet, but leans a bit more sweet which my wife and I personally enjoy. The bowls are loaded with fixings like wonton, chicken, duck, meatballs, etc.

It's very rare, but sometimes I'd order their chow fun (dry) and that's usually pretty good too, as well as their fried shrimp/crab cake things which is also VERY good. Unfortunately the fried crab cakes are just as much as a bowl of noodles, so we stopped ordering that.

This place is a noodle shop just for eating and leaving. Don't expect great service or a place to hang out and chit-chat with friends/family. You eat and you leave. Service sucks here. Straight up. Asked for something? Good luck. You'll be lucky if you get it at all.

Though there used to be one old man who was very nice. Unfortunately a lot of them retired since a lot of them were pretty old.

Anyway, excellent food and always pretty busy. It's been awhile, so I can't wait to...

My wife & I had an early lunch at this restaurant before our long drive home. We were surprised by the crowd standing outside & waiting for tables. But the wait was not long.

This restaurant is a bit divey. The tables were very close to one another. The staff came across as family members working together, doing the best they could. Coordination appeared lacking. One waiter took our order. A short time later, another waiter came asking us for order.

Speaking of being uncoordinated, my wife and I did not coordinate well that time either. Typically, we consulted one another then ordered different dishes. Then halfway through our meal, we would swap our dishes. This way, we diversified our taste instead of being limited to a single dish. But this day, we failed to do so, and ended up ordering essentially the same thing.

My wife ordered the egg noodle soup with duck meat; I had egg noodles and duck meat with broth on the side. We still swapped our bowls midway through but both contents were basically the same. Both were good in their own way.

We also had one order of Chinese fried dough. One order had 2 double pieces. The dough was not as light and tasty as we would like. We could not even finish one pair.

The Vietnamese coffee had too much condensed milk, making it way too sweet. We had to dilute it quite a bit with water to make it drinkable.

The cost of our lunch though was very reasonable.

If we come back, we will go for other dishes, not any side item or drink...