J Zhou serves authentic and quality dim sum in OC. Although, it does come with a pricier menu. There aren't many good options around so it's nice to have this restaurant within a short driving distance. The interior is modern and spacious. The service is hit and miss but today it was much better than usual. Upon arriving around noon, the wait was only 15 minutes for a party of 4. They provide a menu sheet to check off your items. We ordered some classic and signature dishes: siu mai, har gow, steamed rice paper with mince beef, fish paste stuffed in chili pepper, bean curd roll with shrimp, house special baked bbq pork buns, chicken feet in black bean sauce, taro cake with preserved meat, and fried vermicelli with beef and egg, imperial osmanthus cake, and egg tart. We enjoyed our dim sum and all dishes were very tasty. The only issue was that some of the items were brought out luke warm. They were also on a slow pace with the flow of our order. This is one of my top picks for dim sum outside SGV!
Tina P.
My coworkers and I came here a year ago, and it was busy and service was good. Lots of workers running around and they tried their best. Today, I came back with four other coworkers for lunch, and got terrible service. We were all seated but waited a good 10-15 minutes before we had to flag down two people to place our order. We were on our lunch so can't sit around too long. We placed our order and the food came one by one. The food was great! When we were done eating, we sat and waited to get the bill. Then after another 10-15 minutes, we started flagging down people again to get the bill. It's not an ideal place to come for lunch if you don't have a lot of time to kill. I think they are short-staffed. There was one restaurant employee that we noticed worked hard throughout the whole time while we were there...It was the guy bussing everything...He brought the tea, water, and condiments when we sat down. He covered the whole restaurant.
Qiang Z.
This restaurant was indeed weird. I would tell you the truth story what I met with. Someday, my friend and I went to this restaurant for lunch, and we just walked in. The server let us took a seat. Then he asked us: what kind of tea do you want? For some reason, my friend cannot drink tea during that time and for me I do not like tea. So I just told the server that we do not wanna tea and just hot water. You know what, the server's face unhappy like a ****, and he said we have same charge as tea if you order the hot water. I was just surprised and mad. It was my first time heard about charging a fee for hot water in a restaurant. I felt the service was also like a ****. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. Hopefully you guys can read my story and know what happened before you go.
Melody C.
I hate to say that it's normal and we shouldn't expect much from a Chinese restaurant. I have been to many Chinese owned restaurants/shops with excellent customer service before. But I can't believe how terrible it can be at J Zhou and wonder why patrons should encounter this kind of dining experience. My toddlers were not having a good day and being super fuzzy, so my family told the man in charge for seatings (in grayish suit with glasses) that we were all here but 3 of them were at the parking lot. All he said was .. "which means you don't have your entire party here yet.." (with a despicable look + no eye contact) "I won't seat you until your whole party is here inside and even that, I will still have to consider whether I want to give you a table or not"... WHAT THE?????? If not because we had an elderly relative with us, we would have just leave ... can't believe this is how we were being treated at this restaurant.. We will rather travel to other areas for dim sum from now on.. this is just Ridiculous!
Calvin M.
I've been in Irvine now for 9 months, and the search still continues for a good dim sum restaurant. Although I knew the prices were high going into this restaurant, I was expecting the quality to at least be the best of the 4 popular dim sum spots in Irvine. It wasn't even top 2. There were only 3 of us, so we didn't get a large sample size per say, but we ordered some traditional dim sum dishes to gauge whether we should bring other guests here for special occasions. Answer was definitely a NO. LA guests would laugh at the quality per price here. Siumai size was laughable. Fried dumplings tasted old. This place gets 2 stars for having Yelp Check-in so I didn't have to stand in front of the restaurant for 1hr before my disappointing meal, and 1 more star for having the nicest decor of any Chinese restaurant I've been to (even with its dirty carpets, just don't look down).
TianChee S.
This place was packed and had to wait maybe 20 minutes before we got seated. Presentation wise, it much more appealing to dine here than Irvine China Garden. I think they have much more options to choose from here but it definitely cost a lot more here. They don't do the cart style, you just order from a sheet and they give directly to you from the kitchen. The malay sponge cake here was not as good as Irvine China garden, it was unevenly steamed/made as there was a lot of big bubbles at the bottom half of the cake. So I would not order that again here. Portion wise I felt was smaller here. So they seem to focus more on quality than giving quantity but even so some items I felt quality was more or less parity with Irvine China Garden. The only reason I would come here over Irvine China garden is that they seem to offer more variety of dishes to eat than Irvine China garden.
Marinda Z.
I'll give 10 out of 5 for their service! It was quite late when we decided to go J Zhou for lunch, so we called to check their last call. It seems we will be able to make there 5 mins before the last call, so we wanted to give a shot. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and the lobby was entirely empty and cleaned up when we arrived and we though there's no way they will serve us. However, the guy who greeted us was like: Harry up, order everything as soon as possible, we will hold the kitchen for you. So we ended up got all our food, and the servant even told us to take our time to eat. The food was as great as usual and the service was fantastically great with 0% attitude, 100% profession! This's how a business should do to serve clients.
Lynn S.
Revisit: maybe Not a great dim sum place, but fine. There are better ones out there. The services are better than others. The taste is fair tho, though not a go-to place....
Mindy F.
First time eating here for lunch and selected seafood congee and deep fried pork spareribs with garlic. The food was delicious and the service and staff were very friendly and attentive. The decor of this restaurant is lovely; especially the wall case that has an impressive display of objects! For our first time here we had a very enjoyable experience-Many thanks!
Customer service is non-existent. Most servers were arrogant and argumentative, they should not be in hospitality industry and if I didn't know better I would assume they are Wall Street elites. Very small portion but high price. The soup I orders tasted awful and nothing like the pic. The place was pretty empty at Saturday dinner time. The stir fry flat rice noodle dish I ordered had all the flat noodle broken to less than one inch length and looked like noodle you would find in a trash can. Asked if they could make another one without breaking the noodles so much, the servers could not care less and argued non stop. The atmosphere is very uncomfortable there with no sense of service. Did not hear a single thank you or even goodbye the whole time. Server tossed plates rudely when replacing dirty plates and generally treated us with lots of attitude and irritation.
A C.
My parents and i love this place! Went for the first time and it was so good and we were hungry that we dug in and i couldn't take pictures of the food we ordered. The lobster congee was amazing and so comforting. We ordered about 7-8 dim sum plates and for the 3 of us who were hungry, it was a good amount. But we also eat a lot :) for dessert, even though we were full we ordered 2 things and it was the egg tarts and the sesame balls! They were both delicious. The only reason i take off one star is because they forgot part of our order and we had to wait a while and our appetite was gone by the time they remembered and brought it after we asked them about it. And also they don't have chili sauce!! They only have homemade jars for sale but we didn't want to buy a jar just because we wanted spicy sauce.
Janette N.
I don't get how this place is so packed when there are way better dimsum places that are more affordable. Our bill came out to a 100 dollars but we didn't even order half as much as what we usually do at dimsum restaurants. The shrimp paper roll had an extremely thick dough, the intenstine had a bad smell and aftertaste, and the meatballs were so packed with dill, I couldn't even decipher its taste.
Ashley H.
I saw on social media that this was someone's favorite dim sum spot. I was very excited to try this place out. This review is for their Dim Sum and I did not try their dinner menu. Food I usually judge dim sum in 3 areas: shumai, shrimp rice roll, and creative stuff that I don't see at other places. To start, shumai was okay. Definitely not nearly close to some of the best shumai I have ever had. The flavor of the pork was lacking, the look wasn't as appealing. Shrimp Rice Roll, the key to this dish is how thin they can get the rice roll. And the answer was not very thin. Also, they definitely get us too little soy sauce for the rice roll. The flavor was not 100 % there. The creative, I did this one dish, silver noodles. It was a dish I used to get in China, and honestly, this is the only place that serves it. However, the flavor was alright. The shrimp and meat in the bean curd sheet were delicious, though. I would recommend ordering that. Price $ $$$, everything was definitely a couple of dollars more expensive than most LA places. Wait They have a yelp waitlist. On Saturday around 12 pm, the suggested wait time from Yelp was about 6-12 minutes. I definitely waited about 20 minutes. Not a big deal since I was expected to wait longer. Do be aware that the Yelp suggested time may not be accurate. Parking This is inside of a busy shopping mall. Parking was a bit crazy. However, since it's a mall, there will be parking if you're willing to walk. Environment This very high end, you have a very fancy dining experience. There's no dim sum cart going around. You'll have to order when you get seated. Wait They have a yelp waitlist. On Saturday around 12 pm, the suggested wait time from Yelp was about 6-12 minutes. I definitely waited about 20 minutes. Not a big deal since I was expected to wait longer. Do be aware that the Yelp suggested time may not be accurate. Parking This is inside of a busy shopping mall. Parking was a bit crazy. However, since it's a mall, if you're willing to walk, there will be parking. Environment This very high end, you have a very fancy dining experience. There's no dim sum cart going around. You'll have to order when you get seated.
Dimple T.
Seriously beautiful and elegant restaurant. The food and service are excellent! I loved the ambiance and the delicious food! Will definitely come back!
Very messy service, they messed up my order.
J Zhou serves authentic and quality dim sum in OC. Although, it does come with a pricier menu. There aren't many good options around so it's nice to have this restaurant within a short driving distance. The interior is modern and spacious. The service is hit and miss but today it was much better than usual. Upon arriving around noon, the wait was only 15 minutes for a party of 4. They provide a menu sheet to check off your items. We ordered some classic and signature dishes: siu mai, har gow, steamed rice paper with mince beef, fish paste stuffed in chili pepper, bean curd roll with shrimp, house special baked bbq pork buns, chicken feet in black bean sauce, taro cake with preserved meat, and fried vermicelli with beef and egg, imperial osmanthus cake, and egg tart. We enjoyed our dim sum and all dishes were very tasty. The only issue was that some of the items were brought out luke warm. They were also on a slow pace with the flow of our order. This is one of my top picks for dim sum outside SGV!
My coworkers and I came here a year ago, and it was busy and service was good. Lots of workers running around and they tried their best. Today, I came back with four other coworkers for lunch, and got terrible service. We were all seated but waited a good 10-15 minutes before we had to flag down two people to place our order. We were on our lunch so can't sit around too long. We placed our order and the food came one by one. The food was great! When we were done eating, we sat and waited to get the bill. Then after another 10-15 minutes, we started flagging down people again to get the bill. It's not an ideal place to come for lunch if you don't have a lot of time to kill. I think they are short-staffed. There was one restaurant employee that we noticed worked hard throughout the whole time while we were there...It was the guy bussing everything...He brought the tea, water, and condiments when we sat down. He covered the whole restaurant.
This restaurant was indeed weird. I would tell you the truth story what I met with. Someday, my friend and I went to this restaurant for lunch, and we just walked in. The server let us took a seat. Then he asked us: what kind of tea do you want? For some reason, my friend cannot drink tea during that time and for me I do not like tea. So I just told the server that we do not wanna tea and just hot water. You know what, the server's face unhappy like a ****, and he said we have same charge as tea if you order the hot water. I was just surprised and mad. It was my first time heard about charging a fee for hot water in a restaurant. I felt the service was also like a ****. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. Hopefully you guys can read my story and know what happened before you go.
I hate to say that it's normal and we shouldn't expect much from a Chinese restaurant. I have been to many Chinese owned restaurants/shops with excellent customer service before. But I can't believe how terrible it can be at J Zhou and wonder why patrons should encounter this kind of dining experience. My toddlers were not having a good day and being super fuzzy, so my family told the man in charge for seatings (in grayish suit with glasses) that we were all here but 3 of them were at the parking lot. All he said was .. "which means you don't have your entire party here yet.." (with a despicable look + no eye contact) "I won't seat you until your whole party is here inside and even that, I will still have to consider whether I want to give you a table or not"... WHAT THE?????? If not because we had an elderly relative with us, we would have just leave ... can't believe this is how we were being treated at this restaurant.. We will rather travel to other areas for dim sum from now on.. this is just Ridiculous!
I've been in Irvine now for 9 months, and the search still continues for a good dim sum restaurant. Although I knew the prices were high going into this restaurant, I was expecting the quality to at least be the best of the 4 popular dim sum spots in Irvine. It wasn't even top 2. There were only 3 of us, so we didn't get a large sample size per say, but we ordered some traditional dim sum dishes to gauge whether we should bring other guests here for special occasions. Answer was definitely a NO. LA guests would laugh at the quality per price here. Siumai size was laughable. Fried dumplings tasted old. This place gets 2 stars for having Yelp Check-in so I didn't have to stand in front of the restaurant for 1hr before my disappointing meal, and 1 more star for having the nicest decor of any Chinese restaurant I've been to (even with its dirty carpets, just don't look down).
This place was packed and had to wait maybe 20 minutes before we got seated. Presentation wise, it much more appealing to dine here than Irvine China Garden. I think they have much more options to choose from here but it definitely cost a lot more here. They don't do the cart style, you just order from a sheet and they give directly to you from the kitchen. The malay sponge cake here was not as good as Irvine China garden, it was unevenly steamed/made as there was a lot of big bubbles at the bottom half of the cake. So I would not order that again here. Portion wise I felt was smaller here. So they seem to focus more on quality than giving quantity but even so some items I felt quality was more or less parity with Irvine China Garden. The only reason I would come here over Irvine China garden is that they seem to offer more variety of dishes to eat than Irvine China garden.
I'll give 10 out of 5 for their service! It was quite late when we decided to go J Zhou for lunch, so we called to check their last call. It seems we will be able to make there 5 mins before the last call, so we wanted to give a shot. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and the lobby was entirely empty and cleaned up when we arrived and we though there's no way they will serve us. However, the guy who greeted us was like: Harry up, order everything as soon as possible, we will hold the kitchen for you. So we ended up got all our food, and the servant even told us to take our time to eat. The food was as great as usual and the service was fantastically great with 0% attitude, 100% profession! This's how a business should do to serve clients.
Revisit: maybe Not a great dim sum place, but fine. There are better ones out there. The services are better than others. The taste is fair tho, though not a go-to place....
First time eating here for lunch and selected seafood congee and deep fried pork spareribs with garlic. The food was delicious and the service and staff were very friendly and attentive. The decor of this restaurant is lovely; especially the wall case that has an impressive display of objects! For our first time here we had a very enjoyable experience-Many thanks!
Restaurantji Recommends
Customer service is non-existent. Most servers were arrogant and argumentative, they should not be in hospitality industry and if I didn't know better I would assume they are Wall Street elites. Very small portion but high price. The soup I orders tasted awful and nothing like the pic. The place was pretty empty at Saturday dinner time. The stir fry flat rice noodle dish I ordered had all the flat noodle broken to less than one inch length and looked like noodle you would find in a trash can. Asked if they could make another one without breaking the noodles so much, the servers could not care less and argued non stop. The atmosphere is very uncomfortable there with no sense of service. Did not hear a single thank you or even goodbye the whole time. Server tossed plates rudely when replacing dirty plates and generally treated us with lots of attitude and irritation.
My parents and i love this place! Went for the first time and it was so good and we were hungry that we dug in and i couldn't take pictures of the food we ordered. The lobster congee was amazing and so comforting. We ordered about 7-8 dim sum plates and for the 3 of us who were hungry, it was a good amount. But we also eat a lot :) for dessert, even though we were full we ordered 2 things and it was the egg tarts and the sesame balls! They were both delicious. The only reason i take off one star is because they forgot part of our order and we had to wait a while and our appetite was gone by the time they remembered and brought it after we asked them about it. And also they don't have chili sauce!! They only have homemade jars for sale but we didn't want to buy a jar just because we wanted spicy sauce.
I don't get how this place is so packed when there are way better dimsum places that are more affordable. Our bill came out to a 100 dollars but we didn't even order half as much as what we usually do at dimsum restaurants. The shrimp paper roll had an extremely thick dough, the intenstine had a bad smell and aftertaste, and the meatballs were so packed with dill, I couldn't even decipher its taste.
I saw on social media that this was someone's favorite dim sum spot. I was very excited to try this place out. This review is for their Dim Sum and I did not try their dinner menu. Food I usually judge dim sum in 3 areas: shumai, shrimp rice roll, and creative stuff that I don't see at other places. To start, shumai was okay. Definitely not nearly close to some of the best shumai I have ever had. The flavor of the pork was lacking, the look wasn't as appealing. Shrimp Rice Roll, the key to this dish is how thin they can get the rice roll. And the answer was not very thin. Also, they definitely get us too little soy sauce for the rice roll. The flavor was not 100 % there. The creative, I did this one dish, silver noodles. It was a dish I used to get in China, and honestly, this is the only place that serves it. However, the flavor was alright. The shrimp and meat in the bean curd sheet were delicious, though. I would recommend ordering that. Price $ $$$, everything was definitely a couple of dollars more expensive than most LA places. Wait They have a yelp waitlist. On Saturday around 12 pm, the suggested wait time from Yelp was about 6-12 minutes. I definitely waited about 20 minutes. Not a big deal since I was expected to wait longer. Do be aware that the Yelp suggested time may not be accurate. Parking This is inside of a busy shopping mall. Parking was a bit crazy. However, since it's a mall, there will be parking if you're willing to walk. Environment This very high end, you have a very fancy dining experience. There's no dim sum cart going around. You'll have to order when you get seated. Wait They have a yelp waitlist. On Saturday around 12 pm, the suggested wait time from Yelp was about 6-12 minutes. I definitely waited about 20 minutes. Not a big deal since I was expected to wait longer. Do be aware that the Yelp suggested time may not be accurate. Parking This is inside of a busy shopping mall. Parking was a bit crazy. However, since it's a mall, if you're willing to walk, there will be parking. Environment This very high end, you have a very fancy dining experience. There's no dim sum cart going around. You'll have to order when you get seated.
Seriously beautiful and elegant restaurant. The food and service are excellent! I loved the ambiance and the delicious food! Will definitely come back!