Jiang Nan

By the time Jiang Nan opened its doors in November 2025, its space at Irvine’s Orange Tree Square shopping center had already been home to substantial Chinese destinations including Sam Woo BBQ and Tang Du – each starting strong before declining and disappearing, with the latter folding in 2023. After two years of vacancy and a thorough remodeling, this New York-based chain emerged as the latest concept to give the space a shot, joining neighbors Bafang Dumpling, Heytea, Honeymee, MoMo Paradise, and Yintang around a frequently congested common parking lot (apart from a collection of intermittently occupied Tesla Supercharger spaces immediately next door).

Though Jiang Nan was still in its soft opening/grand opening stages during our two visits, we believe that the chain’s first Orange County outlet (number nine on a stated path to 40 locations) will be very successful. We’re not saying that because of the restaurant’s conspicuous Michelin Guide signs and social media references – which are notably specific to Jiang Nan’s original Flushing/Queens location, reflecting its Bib Gourmand (“good quality, good value cooking”) status – but rather because the food is legitimately very good, and even early on, the servers are clearly aiming for better than acceptable Chinese restaurant service.

Rather than promising either hyperlocal/regional authenticity or claiming direct Chinese heritage, Jiang Nan positions itself as a modern, upscale “Chinese Fusion” restaurant with a somewhat more affordable menu than Meizhou Dongpo. Digital menus – only delivered through ordering tablets – offer half or whole Peking Ducks (listed on menus as Pecking Duck), cumin lamb dishes, soup dumplings, plenty of pork and beef choices, mimetic fruit pastries, many stir- or deep-fried seafood items, and some vegetarian entrees. There are few appetizers, and most dishes are in the $20 to $30 range, with duck and seafood plates pushing past those numbers. Handfuls of drinks ($4 to $10) and desserts ($12 to $15) are also available, ranging from canned sodas and candle-heated teapots to fresh-cooked or pre-made sweets.

While the Irvine location’s interior design isn’t quite up to Meizhou Dongpo levels of elegance or Xibei-style scale, it’s an improvement on the latter Sam Woo and Tang Du years; one’s focus quickly shifts from the dining room forest to the tree-like wooden tables as servers deliver dishes. Each table gets a small but refillable bowl of spiced and pickled cabbage to whet the appetite before ordering, and once you’ve selected your dishes on the tablet, a server will arrive and confirm your choices.

As you wait for your food, stacked duck platters, crab-shaped bowls of crab, and still-smoked rib plates will arrive at adjacent tables, each intriguing enough to tease from afar while guaranteeing you’ll leave Jiang Nan feeling like there’s a need to return to sample more. That happened on our first visit, when a Mega Lamb Skewer ($17) was unavailable, and a half duck ($50) was quoted as requiring too much kitchen time to wait for. We returned back within a week to give them both a shot.

On our first visit, we tried to sample a variety of Chinese and Chinese-American dishes to get a sense of what was good here, and the answer was “pretty much everything.” The least standout items we ordered were two “Pecking Duck Spring Rolls” ($9), which were sliced sharply in half and poorly plated, but perfectly crispy outside and uniquely duck-filled inside. Next up was a $13 set of “Lucky Four Soup Dumplings” (pork, crab and pork, chicken and shrimp, chicken and black truffle) that were fairly thick-skinned and low on soup compared with Din Tai Fung’s, but fine on filling and solid in flavor. We didn’t feel the need to re-order either of these items in the future.