Tasty Spot Cafe

In 2022, Delicious Food Corner – a small Hong Kong-style Chinese restaurant chain from Los Angeles – opened its first location in Orange County, choosing the former Beijing Restaurant space in Irvine’s Northpark neighborhood to offer dim sum, BBQ, and a variety of largely fried appetizers and stir-fried entrees. Delicious Food Corner was welcome in the sense that new full-service Chinese restaurants became locally rare following Sam Woo’s closure, but in fall 2022, the chain split up, and the Irvine location became Tasty Spot Cafe.

Tasty Spot Cafe’s menu begins with nearly 20 dim sum dishes ($9 to $13 each) – expected items such as har gow, shiu mai, BBQ buns, and sesame balls, plus deep fried salt & pepper capelin fish or chicken cartilage – with most items at or above $10. A second page includes 13 “marinated” options ($13 to $50), with tofu on the lower end, cuttlefish and beef tendons in the middle, and duck or multi-item combo plates at the higher end. Eighteen additional menu pages cover multiple Hong Kong-style bases, including everything from imitation shark fin soup – still carrying Delicious Food Corner branding – to congees, rice noodle rolls, Chinese curry dishes, hot pots, and stir-fried vegetable dishes. Those looking for more Western options will find grilled steaks, Italian-influenced spaghetti plates, french fries, and even spam and egg sandwiches on the menu. Last but not least, hot and iced drinks (~$3 to $6.50) range from milk teas and coffees to salted lemon Cokes and 7Ups, frozen red bean or lychee slushes, and yogurt Yakults.