Rice & Noodle Asian Cuisine

Orange County has a vast collection of Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese restaurants, but when it comes to Indonesian cuisine, there were only three major options in the county (after Indo Ranch closed). Tustin’s Rice & Noodle Indonesian Thai was the newest of them; it more recently operated under the genericized name Rice & Noodle Asian Cuisine before closing at the end of 2024.

As its original name suggests, the menu previously had “Thai” and “Indonesian” sections that were separated from one another. They were replaced by an integrated menu with common categories such as “appetizers” and “noodle,” then badges to indicate Thai or Indonesian dishes. This enabled you to easily find Thai chicken satay near Indonesian sate ayam, each with its own preparation and description, even if their major differences weren’t flagged in the descriptive text.

Additional Indonesian items included perkedel potato/corn beef/egg and rujak juhi cucumber/sweet potato/jicama appetizers, a gado-gado vegetable and rice cube salad with peanut sauce, egg noodle soups, pan fried egg and rice noodle dishes, and multiple nasi rice dishes –  bungkus, rames, rendang, and kuning. Every entree was under $16, and many were in the $12-$13 range, with appetizers running from $9 to $12.50.

On our first visit, we stuck to the Indonesian dishes, trying the pork sate, fried chicken with sambal, beef rendang, and mie tek tek noodles, plus a “red syrup” drink. It’s hard to screw up grilled pork once Indonesian peanut sauce is drizzled on top (and it was pretty good here, if a bit dry); similarly, we always love the mixed herbal/coconut flavor and uneven, shredded texture of sambal, which improves anything it touches. That said, the dishes otherwise didn’t make much of an impression: the flavors tended to be flat, and the presentation only a little better than takeout quality.