Jiang Nan – Closed

Jiang Nan opened at Irvine’s Orange Tree Square in November 2025, replacing prior Chinese restaurant Tang Du after two years of vacancy and a thorough remodeling. The New York-based chain used signs and its social media account to tout Michelin Guide attention – notably specific to its original Flushing/Queens location, reflecting its Bib Gourmand (“good quality, good value cooking”) status – but wasn’t just posing: Its food was legitimately very good, and there were signs its servers were aiming for better than acceptable Chinese restaurant service.

Rather than promising either hyperlocal/regional authenticity or claiming direct Chinese heritage, Jiang Nan positioned itself as a modern, upscale “Chinese Fusion” restaurant with a somewhat more affordable menu than Meizhou Dongpo. Digital menus – only delivered through ordering tablets – offered 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 were few appetizers, and most dishes were 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) were also available, ranging from canned sodas and candle-heated teapots to fresh-cooked or pre-made sweets.

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

As guests waited for food, stacked duck platters, crab-shaped bowls of crab, and still-smoked rib plates typically arrived at adjacent tables, each intriguing enough to tease from afar while guaranteeing people left Jiang Nan feeling 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.