Potato Powder Love Noodle

We’ve previously sung the praises of Jamboree Promenade, an unusual Irvine plaza that has hosted a wide variety of narrowly focused regional or otherwise specialized Asian restaurants and cafes over the years: Spicy Master, YGF Malatang, XiXi Fried Skewer, and Yonny at the moment; Bober, Naricha, and Frank’s BBQ & Noodles before. In March 2026, a new restaurant took over the former Frank’s space: Potato Powder Love Noodle, alternately known as Potato Love Noodle or Potato Noodles. As the first Orange County location of Fenaimian, a 2013-vintage chain that originated in Zhengzhou, China and now has over 100 outlets – including earlier U.S. outposts in Los Angeles and San Diego Counties – the Jamboree Promenade space appeared almost overnight. After cleaning the old restaurant, the new owners quickly put up colorful, temporary vinyl signs co-branded with Fantuan Delivery logos, using almost entirely Chinese language descriptions and offering no external menus. Still unlisted online as of late March 2026, it soft-launched as an IYKYK kind of business.

Guests order using either a smartphone/QR code interface to access an English/Chinese digital menu, or a laminated single-sided menu card at the front counter. Benches and chairs spread across a compact but clean dining room and an adjacent outdoor patio accommodate roughly forty people; following “order placed” and “item ready” chimes that can be heard across the space, several servers rapidly bring out food items fresh from assembly in the closed kitchen.

As Potato Powder’s unusual name suggests, the big draws here are a handful of medium-sized noodle bowls made partially with potato-based noodles, differing in boths and ingredients. Tomato, “not spicy,” “slightly spicy,” and “Sichuan mala spicy” versions are $14 each, with sesame paste ($15), premium beef ($17) and premium seafood ($17) as alternatives, the latter using mostly meatballs or fishballs as “premium” ingredients. Guests can choose potato powder noodles, knife-cut noodles, or a mix of both, then select additional spicing for no charge, and add other items ranging from quail eggs to lobster balls and mushrooms for $2 each. The restaurant also offers three rice combo plates (braised chicken, spare ribs, or beef) from $14 to $19 with tailored spice levels, plus a small collection of fried skewers ($2 to $7) – mostly the same ingredients offered as alternatives for the noodle bowls – and substantially fried appetizers ($7 to $9). Bottled and canned drinks are $2.50 each.

Everything we tried at Potato Powder Love Noodle was in the “pretty good” to “good” range. The single most compelling item was the Sichuan mala spicy noodles ($14), which unexpectedly included three types of noodles (flat and dot-textured potato-based ribbons, thicker and uneven knife-cut noodles, and tubular udon) as well as a couple of quail eggs, loosely assembled pork meatballs, mushrooms, dried tofu, crushed nuts, seaweed, and day lilies. Though the broth was described as “pork bones and chicken,” heavy mala seasoning and sesame oil turned it blood red and numbingly peppery to the point where other flavors were barely obvious, leaving the different and unique noodle textures as the real standouts in this dish. For the price, it struck us as a solid value by today’s standards – and a fun experience for noodle fans – though the quality of the included meats was decidedly non-premium.