Taibat Noodle House

Just across the street from South Coast Plaza, Santa Ana’s Tapioca Express was the last Orange County location of a once-proud boba and slushie chain that faded out after 25 years of serving drinks and snacks. In March 2025, the space received a much-needed interior redesign when it evolved into Taibat Noodle House – a halal restaurant serving northwestern Chinese dishes. With seating for roughly 30 people, Taibat focuses on Islamic and Uyghur favorites, most notably bowls of hand-cut noodles and meats with thin, lightly spicy sauces.

Using your smartphone with an on-table QR code, you can order from a small menu split into four sections: “cold dishes,” mostly fried “snacks,” “main dishes,” and “specialties.” Prices are generally in the $7-9 range for appetizers and $14-30 for entrees, with most noodle and fried rice dishes under $15, and substantially protein-heavy dishes going for $29-30. Fans of Tapioca Express will be happy to find some of the old chain’s drinks on their digital menu, including milk teas, slushes, smoothies, and coffees, though they aren’t advertised on Taibat’s main menu boards, and some are only available after the restaurant’s kitchen is rolling at full steam.

We tried a mix of cold and hot dishes spanning three of the aforementioned categories, skipping only the fried snacks collection of common items such as popcorn chicken, spring rolls, calamari, and french fries. For $8 each, we tried a fairly large portion of seaweed salad and a similarly generous, well-hydrated plate of wood ear mushrooms, each atypically (and wonderfully) light on oil, though not particularly punchy in flavor. Spicy fried lamb ribs and big plate chicken entrees were each two-note combinations of salt and spice, with the ample but super-fatty lamb favoring spice over salt, and the surprisingly lean chicken in a thin sauce that favored salt over spice.