dPlace Steak & Pasta

Many of the Orange County restaurants promoted by influencers are some combination of overhyped, overpriced, and basic – a trend that has continued to lower the trustworthiness of local social media posts. So we didn’t know whether we’d be thrilled or underwhelmed when we visited the Fullerton restaurant dPlace, not long after the largely anonymous, three-year-old restaurant generated a small surge of seemingly coordinated influencer attention in late 2025.

dPlace turns out to be something rare: an actually overlooked “hidden gem” with a fairly unique concept. Located 10 minutes away from the Buena Park location of its 2021-vintage sister shabu/grill restaurant dPot and across the parking lot from a months-old sibling (tonkatsu spot 88 Katsu), dPlace is the most daring in the bunch. The menu fuses Korean and Italian dishes together in a similar fashion to Asian-Italian restaurants Il Fiora, Ini, and Momonoki, though dPlace’s execution is substantially different.

It’s worth noting up front that the restaurant has gone by the names dPlace Steak & Pasta and dPlace Steakhouse while fine-tuning its menu, and though neither name fits quite right, “steakhouse” is particularly ill-suited to the experience. The former Souplantation location has zero trappings of the types of places (Ruth’s Chris, Fogo de Chao, Houston’s, Texas de Brazil, or Galpão Gaucho) the word steakhouse evokes, and dPlace is decidedly unfancy – not even close to Ini’s level, and practically the only thing it has in common with Korean-Italian pizza/pasta house Il Fiora is a rose gold holder for its tablet menus. From the robots that deliver dishes to tables to Jinro frogs and Dippin’ Dots signs, dPlace’s dining room just doesn’t scream “date night.” But this is one of those situations where you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Though card-style menus are available for browsing at the front counter, those tablets are the way you’ll easily order from whichever of dPlace’s lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch menus is available when you Thankfully, those menus substantially overlap, with certain breakfast-y omissions in the evening, and fewer entrees earlier in the day. At lunch, almost every plate is in the $15 to $20 range, adding more $25 to $35 options at dinner, though two signature dishes (variants on OC Galbi short ribs) are $62 to $65 all day, and a prime rib eye with mashed potatoes is $52 at night. These and a $15 caesar salad also happen to be the closest items one will find at dPlace to a conventional steakhouse; virtually every other entree is either Korean, Italian, or a hybrid of the two.

Pastas, for instance, include a spicy Korean gochujang sauce, pollock roe cream cauce, or creamy rosé tomato sauce, while normally Italian risottos feature ingredients such as bulgogi and kimchi, spicy tomatoes, or cream, onions, and reggiano parmesan cheese. A house steak is prepped with a KBBQ-style marinade, and a truffled potato appetizer takes the form of a Korean jeon pancake. Proscuitto grapefruit burrata ($17), the sort of item that could as easily appear on Ini’s Japanese-Italian fusion menu, was regrettably unavailable on our visit, downgraded to a meatless grapefruit burrata at the same price. We passed, but with regrets.