A Night of Eating at the OC Night Market

One of my favourite things about Asia is the night markets.  Each city has their own unique night markets and each night market has their own speciality shops or items.  Night markets are always on my list of places to visit whenever I travel to Asia.

When we realized that we would be in LA during one of the weekends that the OC Night Market was being held, we made sure to try and incorporate this into our visit.  The OC Night Market is put on by the same company that organizes the 626 Night Market, but on a much smaller scale, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It turns out that the OC Night Market isn’t too shabby and still had about 70 food vendors and food trucks, and a number of merchandise vendors as well.  An $8 parking fee and a $5 entrance fee can be expected (in 2018).

I guess you know you are in America when food at a night market costs just as much as at a restaurant (if not more).  The prices are ridiculously high for the amount that you are expected to pay.  Although I guess one can argue that you are also paying for the experience of the market. 

We started off with grilled lobster and garlic noodles ($30) from Café 949.  The serving was large enough for 2 and everyone had positive things to say about the lobster.  The noodles on the other hand was quite mediocre.  It was basically just dry spaghetti with a bit of seasoning.

We then split off and went to purchase foods that we each wanted to try.  I ended up at Tacoyaki to try the beef tacos and immediately regretted it after I placed my order.  I neglected to read the sign and didn’t realize that the “taco shell” was made of cheese, which made the taco very greasy and quite hard to eat.  The taco did come with a Hokkaido milk tea, which was delicious.

The stall with the longest line up was the Steamed Buns stall.  Unsure of what all the hype was, I decided to line up and try it.  The night market had only been open for a couple of hours and they were already sold out of the seafood bun, so I just went with the regular pork bun.  It turned out to be delicious but I’m still not sure what made it a “Tokyo” style steamed bun, as it tasted exactly like a Chinese steamed bun.

To end the night, I ordered a cheese tea, appropriately named the “Panda”.  Cheese tea was something I had wanted to try ever since I had heard about it and although it was a steep $10USD for the “Panda”, I caved and ordered it. 

It was delicious.  The saltiness of the cheese blended into the tea really well.  The Peach Healing Tears also added a wonderful texture to the drink.  I’m still not convinced it was worth $10USD, but it was a great introduction to cheese tea and I can’t wait to try it again.

Although there were a number of merchandise vendors at the market, there was nothing too special about them and people seemed to be at the market mainly for the food.  I did like the fact that there weren’t too many vendors with the same foods over and over.  It was nice to be able to choose from all sorts of different foods instead of seeing the same ones over and over again.

 

OC NIght Market
Address: 88 Fair Dr, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, USA