Da Luau Opens Second Store In Foothill Ranch

Edwin Goei

​We Forkers love our Da Luau. Me for their $4.95 pancake breakfasts; Gustavo everything else. But so does our friend, ex-Food Frenzy blogger Niyaz Pirani, who confesses he's addicted to their island chicken a.k.a. mochiko chicken, fried nuggets of hen deeply seeped of shoyu and sugar and coated in a barely-there batter of rice flour with similarities to Japanese chicken karaage, but much sweeter, much more playful, something you eat out of a lunchwagon with rice before you go off to swim and frolic in the sand.

More importantly, Niyaz gave us a tip that the second Da Luau store is just about to open in the space vacated by Olamendi's.

"I just called Da Luau Irvine to ask if Foothills Ranch Da Luau, formerly Olamendi's, opened yet, and they said no, on the 10th," Pirani wrote.