New Orange County Chinese Restaurant Met With Great Suspicion By Locals

Fantacy Lobster House in Foothill Ranch is likely the most opulent Chinese restaurant in the United States.  While Golden Palace had historically been one of the more common Chinese restaurant names, Fantacy Lobster House is the real golden palace. From the golden bathrooms to the golden decorations to the golden video loop this place is absolutely over the top. People who have viewed the website photos thought the images were AI but it’s the real deal.   And indeed it has drawn suspicion from people who believe that the restaurant isn't for real, but rather is some kind of front, most likely for money laundering, but if not that, something equally nefarious.  However, these suspicions, none made by anyone from the Chinese community, appear baseless to me, and are rather made out of ignorance.

Certainly, the restaurant premises are attention grabbing.  The transformation of what used to be a branch of Denny's is astonishing which looks like cost millions of dollars, and which took over two years to complete, in itself raised suspicions.  At a distance, the restaurant actually is not terribly conspicuous.

 

Approaching the entrance the opulence starts to become visible.

But once you step in it’s a different world.

 

But the real highlight is the rest room.

  

An incredible video display.  It actually went on longer but I got tired of holding the camera.

 

 

One last look around the room.

 

 

Crab roe tofu was great.

 

 

Here's the lobster chow mein.

 

 

According to comment on both Reddit and YouTube there is something highly fishy about Fantacy Lobster House.  One Reddit thread described the restaurant as a scam. (Indeed the caption is Has anyone else seen this absolute scam that opened in Foothill Ranch? ) A YouTube video questioned every little thing about the restaurant, such as the apparently wildly inaccurate calorie counts shown on the menu and health department violations.  Indeed, before visiting the restaurant I was largely convinced that there was something fishy going on here.

 

However after looking around the premises the restaurant seems fine to me.  Importantly, as I have written in the past, Irvine has the greatest concentration of Chinese American wealth in the country.  On top of this, Chinese aesthetic tastes are not necessarily consistent with what other people appreciate, with nothing being wrong with being gaudy or ostentatious.  Taking that in mind, to me it's quite reasonable that a restaurant aiming to grab wealthy Chinese customers would create these premises. 

 

In speaking with the restaurant manager, who is an experienced industry professional, it's highly likely that there's nothing fishy going on here.  This venture is the first US business operated by its owners, who just aren't familiar with how business is done in the United States, and have to unlearn what they may have known about running a Chinese restaurant.  Indeed this is consistent with one of the few comments in the Reddit thread that did not agree with the conclusion that there was monkey business going on, which came from a building contractor who explained the length of time taken to renovate the property by the fact that the co-owners kept quibbling with each other over the improvements. 

 

Given that the ownership group is on a steep learning curve, this would explain some of the other criticisms such as the obviously false calorie counts (3100 calories for a lobster dish?), and gross violations in processing live seafood.

 

 

Indeed, the menu is full of dishes that a Chinese gourmet would love, and the pricing isn't that bad (lobster ran about $45 a pound), and the manager is strategizing to improve foot traffic.  I think Fantacy Lobster House is just getting a bad rap from people unfamiliar with the Chinese community.