Kingchops

Founded in 1961, Taiwanese restaurant chain Kingchops expanded to the U.S. in the 2010s with two Southern California locations: One in Orange County (Irvine), and one in LA County (City of Industry). Since 2015, the Irvine Village Center restaurant has focused primarily on the chain’s signature item – deep-fried, pre-sliced pork chops – while offering a collection of additional Taiwanese and Chinese dishes that has grown from modest to mid-sized over time.

Inside Kingchops, you’ll find an almost tropical jungle-like interior with seating for 25 to 30 people, including tables that now rely upon a QR code-based smartphone ordering system. Generally friendly servers drop off a pitcher of water, cups, and finished dishes – typically pretty quickly – while handling manual checkout at a counter.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the pork chops here are truly compelling: more tender and intensely pork-flavored than Japanese-style tonkatsu, despite having a thinner layer of batter, and available for only $10 without rice. The dish originally came with pickled cucumbers and now includes sweet pickled radishes and carrot slices, instead. Another specialty, fried chicken – offered in popcorn chicken and drumstick versions – is as crispy and strongly flavored as the pork chops, though not always guaranteed to be in stock, especially late in any given day. Pork is always available.

Though Taiwanese food tends to look more earthy than beautiful, it can be seriously delicious, and Kingchops makes a lot of commonly available ingredients and dishes. Across multiple visits, we’ve tried Kingchops’ spicy wontons with Sichuan peppercorn sauce, dumplings, wonton soup, spicy beef soup, and chilled spicy garlic cucumber, all great and at very reasonable prices.