Most recently it was Holsteins, serving boozy shakes and burgers, and before that it was Charlie Palmer. Now the first U.S. location of Paradise Dynasty, the internationally acclaimed Singapore-based dumpling restaurant will move into that prime 5,000-square-foot space at Bloomingdale’s in South Coast Plaza.
And that’s not all. Paradise Dynasty will anchor the upstairs at a new food hall called Collage, and its sister restaurant Le Shrimp Ramen will be right downstairs with 8 or 9 other places offering sit-down service. The total space is 16,000 square feet, with a new area carved out of the lower level which served as a warehouse for the department store.
So far Bloomie’s remains mum, responding to inquiries with a “no comment at this time.” But brokers and others who are already wrangling tenants are so excited they’ve spilled the beans: It broke ground last week and it’s opening in spring 2020.
Irvine-based J+R Group is spearheading the development, hospitality industry entrepreneur Leonard Chan is among those helping to curate a collection of restaurants. But Danny Liao and John Kim of Miren.co in Los Angeles landed Paradise Dynasty, part of Singapore-based Paradise Restaurant Group with a portfolio of more than 100 restaurants.
The two college buddies from UC Irvine couldn’t be more excited about the project. “Paradise is right now the number one restaurant group in Singapore,” Liao said. Paradise Dynasty will go head-to-head in South Coast Plaza with Din Tai Fung, the venerable soup dumpling house with eight Southern California locations that are nearly all in shopping centers, and about 150 total which includes those in the Western U.S., throughout Asia and in Dubai. Din Tai Fung’s dumplings are more traditional, Paradise dumplings come in different colors and contain atypical fillings such as durian.
“Paradise Group is really a restaurant group to watch. They’re growing rapidly and doing very well all over Asia and they’re hoping to succeed as well in a new market in the U.S.,” Liao said. “They really respect what Din Tai Fung has done. They pretty much paved the way for this type of food.”
As for Chan, he’s stoked to be among those helping to bring fresh concepts to a favorite location.
“Charlie Palmer was such a darling for all of us industry guys. When it ended up shutting its doors, there was so much collective sadness,” Chan said. “All of us that were there throughout all those years are so happy to see something new, exciting and totally different.”
No other tenants have been announced, but Chan said to expect Spiritea, fruit tea drinks made with fresh fruits, pure cane sugar, and natural ingredients; the company has locations in Richmond, Canada, New York’s East Village and Irvine. MahJong, a globally inspired restaurant with cuisine by Michael Doctulero, former executive chef at Scott’s Restaurant & Bar before Water Grill came along, will move in too.
The food hall doesn’t have a theme but there could be more Asian restaurants on the way. Liao and Kim specialize in “first-to-market” and “high growth” concepts and “a lot of them are Asian,” Liao said. He speaks Mandarin and Kim speaks Korean. Liao was responsible for bringing popular Japanese noodle eatery Marugame Udon to South Coast Plaza. He says that location is one of the highest grossing in its chain even though it opened less than six months ago.
But Collage won’t be the only food hall in South Coast Plaza. Amar Santana’s The Hall Global Eatery is set to open before year’s end. But Collage will have a different vibe, more a “culinary collection” of upscale yet approachable restaurants with no grab-and-go items, Chan said.
He thinks the competition between the halls and dumpling houses will be friendly. He spoke to Santana to make sure concepts were not duplicating and he says Din Tai Fung’s wait times prove that there’s still more demand for dumplings.
Chan is also intent on bringing back some of the nightlife that was lost when Charlie Palmer closed. “When the mall closes, they’ll still be a place to spend time without having to hop in a car or uber,” he said.
