Northern Cafe Westpark — Restaurant in Westpark

This has become my go-to canteen-style Chinese restaurant in Irvine — I literally know the menu by heart at this point! My coworkers and I often come here for dinner after work, and everything always hits the spot.

⭐ Grilled Skewers: Don’t underestimate their BBQ! It’s hard to find good skewers in Irvine, but these are legit — juicy, smoky, sizzling when they arrive. Must-tries: lamb skewers, chicken cartilage, and wings. I also love their nostalgic Chinese-style sausage (淀粉肠) — so good!

⭐ Stir-Fried Dishes: I’ve pretty much tried them all and none disappoint. Every dish has real wok hei (that smoky “breath of the wok”). Favorites: scallion beef, fish-flavored eggplant, and sweet & sour ribs (tastes like Hong Kong-style “sweet-sour pork”). Perfect with a bowl of rice.

⭐ Mini Hot Pot: No explanation needed — go for the spicy beef or golden soup beef pot. Big portions, packed with flavor, and super satisfying.

⭐ Chicken Soup Noodles: I order this every single time. The broth is rich and flavorful, with tender poached chicken and plenty of veggies. Comforting and delicious!

⭐ Dessert Discovery: Tried their Mango Sago Lava Bun for the first time — so good! Warm, creamy mango-coconut filling with chewy coconut bits. Not too sweet, just perfect (but be careful, it’s hot inside!).

The menu is huge — from northern to southern Chinese dishes — and everything we’ve tried has been great. The cold appetizers are also worth exploring. We came with five people, ordered a full table, and still had leftovers. Around $25 per person — definitely qualifies as an “Irvine Canteen”...

Absolutely terrible location of an otherwise fantastic chain. Just go to the one on campus drive, the workers actually work there. Came here with 3 others last night was told there's no waiters and we had to scan a table code to get sent to a website for viewing the menu and ordering. Asked for no mushrooms as I'm slightly allergic and received nothing but mushrooms. Another patron in my table is deathly allergic to tree nuts but he had to ask 3 different employees here to get a singular answer on if his food was safe to eat(they couldn't even tell him, told him to take a risk). Didn't get what I ordered and was picking out mushrooms the whole meal until my throat started getting itchy as the soup still had mushroom in it no matter how much I tried to remove, had to just stop eating it. When paying they told us we cannot pay separately even though we ordered separately and clicked 1 person per order on the trashy website we were forced to order off of. This was the sole human interaction we needed a worker to split the bill but they refused even though the campus location quite literally has 0 problems doing this, there is no excuse you guys can split transactions we're not stupid. I suspect the lazy employee just didn't want to ring up multiple transactions and forced us all under one bill even asking for a tip at the end. Complete lack of any amount of service and when we needed a human to do 5% of their job they couldn't even do that. Completely ruined the night for all of us, what's the point of employees that just stand around and...

Ever tried a Chinese “crepe”? Better known as jian bing (煎饼)!

This was a super affordable and lowkey spot for dim sum in Irvine. Parking lot is huge and surrounded by an H-Mart, TJ Maxx, and other spots for you to walk around & digest after eating.

🥟 FOOD: Portions here were super large! Split between two people we had to take some items home. The potstickers were huge, served piping hot and super delicious. Definitely come to try the jian bing (“beef roll”). I loved how the greens inside were added cold, it created a crisp fresh bite with the warm beef slices. 😋

🥢 INTERIOR: There’s a good size amount of tables inside and plenty of seating outside too (thought not sure if these are serviced by the restaurant). No need to make a reservation but it did get busy on the weekend.

💵 PRICE: Huge plus point, I think our total split per person came out to something like $14 each and we still had leftovers to take home. I appreciated how fair this was especially with a good...