Pepper Lunch

Food was amazing, with outstanding customer service. Thanks to Melissa the manager for the great dine in experience!

This is my first yelp review because I felt the need to leave one. Food was amazing and staff was super friendly especially the Manager Melissa that was very attentive and kind. The ambiance of the restaurant was welcoming.

First time here at Pepper Lunch @ Irvine Spectrum location and I can only say great things about this place! Walking up to the open doors of Pepper Lunch greeted me with amazing smell of its sizzling beef. The quality of the food is amazing! The sizzling stone plate they serve your food in creates the best crispy rice if you let it sit a bit and eat from the top. Food also came out pretty fast and keeps the food hot the entire meal. They offer garlic sauce, salt/pepper, sweet sauce, and chili to spice up your meal. We met Thomas on soft opening day, he was super helpful and kind. It was my very first time eating at this place and I can definitely say that his awesome customer service and friendliness has me wanting to come back. Overall, the environment was really welcoming and warm. I definitely would recommend this place for your while you shopping at Spectrum or date night before movie ( Regal Theater is 2 doors down which is plus).

I've been a fan of this restaurant for a while now. They opened their new restaurant here in Irvine Spectrum and my wife and I tried it out. They had 2 kiosks that were taking orders. Both were full so we waited in line. Both customers ahead on the kiosk took about 25 min to order. This made it irritating for us waiting line watching them scratch their heads trying to wonder what to order. That really sucked. Either make the ordering process easier or add a 3rd kiosk. I went ahead and placed my order in 3-4 minutes for my wife and I. The process was easy but maybe it wasn't for them or they're just weird. Either way ordering is a part of the customer experience at your restaurant. We got our food however my drink was extremely watered down. They replaced it but now extremely sweet. Whatever. No biggie. Believe it or not they had no clean utensils so we had to wait until they can clean them and bring is us some. Seems like the machine stopped working. They messed up a lot of orders for other people as the employees were asking the customers including us what our order was and proving incorrect orders to other people. Once we got through the thick part of the experience here, the food was delicious as expected. I got the jumbo plate with beef and some extra add ons. Portions are as expected. We'll be giving this place another go and hopefully the ordering parts goes smoother.

Good food. Long wait and high price, but the wait may be reduced in the future when the "new restaurant" hype goes down.If you see a line, just know that you don't get to order until a table opens up for you first, and after you order it can take 20-25 min to get your order, which seems like a rather long wait for food that is only partially stir-fried before serving it up.The food is solid though. We ordered the Kimchi Chicken and the Kimchi Beef Pepper Rice. As in any of the restaurants in the chain, the food is served on a sizzling hot cast iron plate with largely raw meat surrounding a bed of rice and corn, with spicy kim chi and generous pepper seasoning. Our chicken came out partially cooked, which makes sense since the chicken chunks are quite thick and would have been raw in the middle had it been provided uncooked like the beef was.In retrospect, thinly sliced beef is better for this kind of dish than chicken. While the chicken was good, the dish lost a bit of its appeal since the chicken was precooked and the sizzle on the plate was more cosmetic than functional. In contrast, the beef is obviously raw beef that was dropped onto a sizzling hot plate to cook in front of you as it sizzles on the plate.I'd probably bump the review to 4 stars if the wait wasn't so long.

This review is for the line they create outside, not the food. It's been 2 weeks since they open. The staffs are very nice. The food seem to have small portion of meat on the regular size (lots of meat on jumbo size), lots of pepper on the rice, oily as usual but that's normal with sizzling plate style. What really is annoying is the way they create this mass long line outside the restaurant to attract attention to the restaurant when they always only sit half of the restaurant. If you take a look when you walk by, you will see half of the restaurant tables are empty and the line outside is very long. Not sure if this is a marketing strategy or just poor management, but I have heard other customers complain to the workers about it during their opening weekend, and still no change to this practice. In a location where there's plenty of restaurants in Irvine Spectrum, it's not a smart practice. You don't see silverlake ramen next door make people stand outside in the cold to wait 40min, they text people when it's their turn for table.

I'm back again to Pepper Lunch! Acelyn was AMAZING! Her customer service was wonderful and she really made an effort to welcome me and make my day. She made kind conversation with me and made sure I had everything I needed with my order. She was awesome! Thank you Acelyn for the great service!

Went here about a week after their grand opening. It was a very rainy night, so I was lucky it wasn't packed and I was easily able to order and get a table inside.I ordered the pepper beef, jumbo, and added several extras. In my opinion, the upcharge for every little item was excessive...charging for green onions? Come on, now.After additions it came out to a whopping $36.For that price, I was expecting a masterpiece FILLED to the brim with meat.What I received was a very small portion of meat, and a normal portion of rice.While it was delicious, I was disappointed in the high cost and the tiny portion of beef, particularly as I paid extra for a jumbo portion.I would try again, but perhaps a different location since these are a franchise.

For a location that seems cursed, Pepper Lunch feels like it can reverse the trend and become a mainstay for the Irvine Spectrum. While viewed as more of a sit-down fast casual place because of the nature of the dish as a sizzling plate, especially given the level of service and time at other locations, this place offers that level of quick service you would think of when it comes to Japanese standards for customer service, ensuring that customers get their food quickly and fresh and allowing for a healthy rate of customer turnover to facilitate business. They were definitely equipped to handle the level of business for opening weekend, but they seem like they have a clear handle of operations to keep a certain consistency.The beef pepper rice plate is an easy classic, and it's all the familiar flavors of the franchise. Be sure to add some sauce while it's cooking for that extra flavor, and you have a reliable meal at fairly affordable prices given the cost of everything going up these days. They seem to have a number of premium options and upgrades and toppings I'm looking to try in the coming days when the crowds die down a bit, but in the meantime I will celebrate their success.It's conveniently located next to the movie theater as well as the best gelato shop in the area, so they're in good company and a perfect place to get a substantial meal in the middle of a shopping trip or before a movie.TIP: Be sure to add their sauce to your dish while it comes out hot and piping.

First time trying pepper lunch & it was so delicious! The service was amazing , shift manager rob was ontop of his work & very attentive . I would definitely recommend eating at pepper lunch !