Lynda’s African Delicacies
Evolved from a food truck, this Irvine African restaurant shares a space with three Asian concepts
Around 2020, Lynda’s – a hair salon and beauty supply store at the Koll Airport Business Center office park near John Wayne Airport – launched a food truck, Lynda’s African Delicacies, which began serving a small menu of West African and Nigerian dishes that were (and still are) impossible to find in Irvine, at that point requiring a road trip to LA County. In 2022, Lynda’s opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant, setting up shop in a different Sky Park Circle building immediately next to the Smart Kitchens ghost kitchens, and seemingly taking inspiration from their concept. By 2026, the old food truck was up for sale, and three additional mini-restaurants were operating within its space: Halal Japanese ramen shop Miyabi, Halal Chinese beef and lamb concept West Meet, and Japanese-American sushi spot Sushi Love.
Walk in the front door and you’ll see only a few small tables, a blocked-off area with steam trays full of ready-to-serve African food, and a counter leading toward a large, open kitchen. If no one’s in front, signs suggest you ring a doorbell, and someone will come out to ask which of the businesses you’re there for. In our experience, the “someone” will generally be a Lynda’s employee, and unlike some ghost kitchens, there are actually a few people in the back separately preparing the concepts’ varied cuisines.
You can go through one of the four laminated menus at the counter, order your food, and wait either inside or at one of a handful of nearby outside tables. Lynda’s will hand off everything in take-out containers with plastic utensils, supplying disposable forks, knives, and spoons, and though the plating won’t be appealing, most of the items will look and taste pretty fresh.
Worth considering: Across several attempts to visit Lynda’s, we sometimes found long lines waiting to place orders – made more challenging by a single register with four menus – and the few tables can be either full or cramped by people waiting to order or get their food. Even so, Lynda’s serves food much faster and offers better seating than the only other West African spot we’ve seen in Orange County, Santa Ana’s All African Cuisines, which operates out of a gas station with no tables, and quotes hour-plus waits for meals.
As of 2026, Lynda’s single-page, single-sided menu is unnecessarily confusing. It’s divided into “rice meals,” “fufu meals,” “noodle meals,” “peppered dishes,” and “seasonal” (yam pottage), each with the same prices for six proteins – beef/goat/lamb ($27), fish/chicken ($25), or oxtail ($30) – that are ready to go in the aforementioned steam trays. To simplify the menu: There are three types of rice ($8/small, $15/large), three pairings of the fluffy bun-like fufu with different vegetables ($15), and options to get just instant ramen-like noodles ($15) or the yam pottage ($8/small, $15/large). Lynda’s protein prices include your choice of any of the starches or seasonal items. Bottled drinks are available from $1 to $5, and side dishes including crunchy puff puff crackers, masa grain cakes, soft golden-fried plaintains, suya kabob, and baked meat pies range from $1.50 to $12.
Stifled by a huge and indecisive group of people ordering ahead of us on our first visit, we returned on another day during the lull between lunch and dinner hours, finding no line and completely empty tables. While meat pies ($4) were unavailable – about to go into the oven, and not ready “anytime soon” – we ordered a suya kabob ($5), a small-sized fried plantains ($8), the lamb version of “peppered dish” ($27) and a jollof rice meal with goat ($27). As it turns out, the “peppered dish” is basically just the same as a rice dish with added spice in the meat and/or the rice (and a little container of spicy sauce to elevate the heat a little more), so we opted for the spicier upgrades to both the lamb and jollof rice to see how different they were from Lynda’s standard versions.
Lynda’s approach to West African dishes differs dramatically from what we had at All African Cuisines – much, much larger protein portions for similar prices, with a roughly 1:1 ratio of meat to starches, benefitting from thicker, tastier sauces with greater depth and at least as much spice. While there wasn’t a huge difference between the heat levels of the goat and “peppered” lamb, the ability to add extra spice was welcome, and we’d generally order either one again. The only caveat was that both proteins used low-end cuts of meat, the goat sporting huge strips of fat and the lamb multiple thick triangular bones. At low-end prices, this wouldn’t be surprising, but for $27 a dish, it was unfortunate. Each jollof rice was delicious, though, and the spicier version was legitimately hotter thanks to obvious additional red pepper. Lynda’s fried plantains were also excellent, but the suya kabob (five chunks of meat on a wooden skewer) was so dried-out that it wasn’t nearly as good as the All African Cuisines version, despite very similar meat quality and seasoning.
The actual ordering and dining experience at Lynda’s isn’t for everyone: this feels less like a restaurant than a food truck with communally shared ordering and dining spaces. But most of the items we tried were quite good, and offered better value than similar alternatives at All African Cuisines, with far faster service and superior seating. We’re not sure whether we’ll return for another round here, as we tend to favor Ethiopian (at Anaheim’s Beteseb) when we’re hungry for African cuisine, but Lynda’s offers some of the area’s best West African food, so if you’re looking for something unique, it’s worth putting on your radar.
Stats
Price: $-$$
Service: Counter
Open Since: 2020/2022
Address
17951 Sky Park Cir. 35-J
Irvine, CA 92614
949.748.9138
Instagram: @lyndasafricandelicacies