Twenty minutes south of the noodle shops and gold jewellers of Little Saigon, a quieter chapter of the Vietnamese American story is being written in cul-de-sacs and master-planned villages. The Vietnamese in Irvine, California did not build a commercial strip the way their parents did in Westminster. They built report cards, medical practices and mortgages, and they did it in one of the most planned cities in America.
The Place
Irvine sits in the centre of Orange County, a city of roughly 66 square miles that did not really exist as a city until 28 December 1971. It grew out of the old Irvine Ranch, 93,000 acres that the Irvine Company began carving into villages in the 1960s around a new University of California campus.
The result is a city of named neighbourhoods rather than organic ones: Woodbridge, Northwood, Turtle Rock, University Park, Portola Springs, more than forty villages in all. Greenbelts thread between them, and the schools are zoned with the same care as the parks. The architect William Pereira and the Irvine Company’s planners had first drawn up a plan for a city of 50,000 around the new campus; the place has long since outgrown that number, but the habit of planning everything has never left it.
By 2020 Irvine was 45.4 percent Asian American, up from 18.1 percent in 1990. In 2016 it became the largest city in the continental United States with an Asian American plurality. Within that, the Vietnamese are one community among several, sharing the city with large Chinese, Korean, Indian and Iranian populations.
How It Became Vietnamese
The Vietnamese arrival in Orange County and the rise of Irvine are two halves of the same county history, separated by a generation.
1975: The county becomes a landing place
When Saigon fell in April 1975, the United States military opened a refugee camp at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, just down the coast from Orange County. Roughly 50,000 Vietnamese refugees passed through it. By the end of 1976, around 12,000 Vietnamese refugees had settled in Orange County, many sponsored by local churches.
They did not come to Irvine. They came to the cheaper, flatter ground of Westminster and Garden Grove, where former strawberry fields and orange groves became the commercial heart of what would be called the original Little Saigon in Westminster. The subtropical climate reminded many of southern Vietnam, and word of mouth did the rest.
1980s and 1990s: Boat people and the second wave
The refugee story arrived in waves. The 1975 evacuees were followed through the late 1970s and 1980s by the boat people, and then by family reunification programmes that ran into the mid 1990s. Each wave deepened the Vietnamese presence in central Orange County, and each produced children who grew up bilingual and aimed at university.
That university was often UC Irvine, founded in 1965 just as the surrounding city was being planned. Vietnamese American students became a visible presence there. In 1987, students founded Project Ngoc to advocate for those still in refugee camps; it disbanded in 1997 once resettlement had largely concluded. Its records, including refugee artwork, are held in UCI’s Southeast Asian Archive.
2000s onward: From Little Saigon to the master plan
As Little Saigon families prospered, the next move was often a few exits south on the freeway. Some stayed close, settling in the quieter Vietnamese pockets of Garden Grove and Fountain Valley. Others pushed further into Irvine, which offered what the older enclaves could not: top-ranked public schools, low crime, and new houses on planned streets. The pull was the school district, not a co-ethnic main street.
UCI itself anchored the migration. Its Vietnamese language programme, launched in autumn 2000, has served nearly 5,000 students. Faculty such as Professor Emerita Linda Vo built the scholarly record, launching the Vietnamese American Oral History Project, known as Viet Stories, in 2011. For many Vietnamese families, sending a child to UCI and buying a home in its school zones became a single ambition.
The Vietnamese who came to Irvine were rarely starting over. They were professionals, in medicine, dentistry, engineering and small business, choosing the city deliberately. Vietnamese immigrants make up roughly 8 percent of Irvine’s foreign-born population, a smaller share than the Chinese or Korean communities, but a settled and upwardly mobile one.
That distinction matters. In Westminster, Vietnamese identity is loud and public, written on every awning along Bolsa Avenue. In Irvine it is private, carried in the home and the extended family rather than the streetscape. A Vietnamese household in Turtle Rock might be invisible to a neighbour for years, until a Tet gathering fills the driveway with cars or a grandmother appears on the porch. The community is there in strength; it simply does not announce itself.
The Landmarks
Irvine’s Vietnamese life is woven into shared Pan-Asian spaces rather than a single district. These are some of the places where it shows.
Diamond Jamboree, 2700-2750 Alton Parkway. This is the closest thing Irvine has to a Vietnamese gathering point, a bustling Asian retail centre at Alton and Jamboree where Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants sit steps apart. On a weekday lunch the food courts and cafes fill with UCI students and office workers, and the Vietnamese spoken there is as ordinary as the English.
Pho Saigon Pearl, 2750 Alton Parkway, Suite 121. Tucked inside Diamond Jamboree, this is one of the city’s best-known Vietnamese restaurants, turning out pho, banh mi, vermicelli plates and Vietnamese iced coffee. It is the kind of place a Northwood family stops at after a Saturday tutoring session, the menu familiar from a grandparent’s kitchen.
399 Vietnamese Kitchen, 13254 Jamboree Road. On the city’s edge at the Market Place, this restaurant serves pho, spring rolls and banh mi to the suburban crowd. It reflects how Vietnamese food in Irvine lives inside polished shopping centres rather than along a noodle strip.
University of California, Irvine, Aldrich Park campus. Founded in 1965, UCI is the gravitational centre of Vietnamese Irvine. Its language programme, its Southeast Asian Archive and its large Vietnamese American student body make it both a destination and a reason families settle nearby. For second-generation children, walking onto this campus is the goal a refugee parent set decades earlier.
University High School, 4771 Campus Drive. Repeatedly ranked among the top public high schools in California, Uni High is one of the magnets that draws Vietnamese families into its attendance zone. The school’s academic intensity is precisely the point for parents who measure success in admissions letters.
Northwood High School, 4515 Portola Parkway. The strongest of Irvine’s comprehensive high schools by test scores, Northwood sits in a heavily Asian American part of the city and carries a minority enrolment above 80 percent. Its calendar of academic and cultural clubs is where many Vietnamese teenagers negotiate being both American and Vietnamese.
Little Saigon, Westminster and Garden Grove. Not in Irvine, but inseparable from it. A short drive north, the original enclave remains the place Irvine families return to for a proper bowl of pho, a Tet errand, or a visit to the Vietnamese Catholic Center in nearby Santa Ana, which serves tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics.
Where They Came From
Irvine’s Vietnamese trace back, almost entirely, to the refugee exodus that began with the fall of Saigon in 1975. The first families were tied to the South Vietnamese government and military, evacuated as the war ended and processed through Camp Pendleton.
Later waves came by sea and through family sponsorship, drawn to an Orange County that already held the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam. Their origins were largely urban South Vietnam, Saigon above all, and the professional and Catholic networks that had shaped the south.
The path to Irvine, though, was internal. Few arrived from Vietnam straight into a Turtle Rock cul-de-sac. They came by way of Westminster and Garden Grove, one prosperous generation at a time, trading the enclave’s familiarity for the master plan’s schools.
Irvine Today
The Vietnamese in Irvine live a particular version of the American second act. There is no Vietnamese district here, no equivalent of Bolsa Avenue, and that absence is itself the story. The community is dispersed through Northwood, Woodbridge and the eastern villages, identifiable in school rosters and waiting rooms more than on any map.
Their daily Vietnamese life happens in shared spaces: a pho counter at Diamond Jamboree, a Lunar New Year celebration at a parish or college, a weekend drive to Little Saigon for groceries and grandparents. Tet is observed at home and at events like the UVSA Tet Festival a few towns over, the largest Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival in the country.
It is a community defined by mobility rather than concentration. The first generation built a city of storefronts to the north. Their Irvine-raised children, many of them UCI graduates now, have folded into a planned, multi-Asian city where being Vietnamese is one thread in a deliberately woven whole. The enclave gave them a foothold. Irvine is what they bought with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Vietnamese live in Irvine, California?
Irvine does not publish a precise Vietnamese count, but Vietnamese immigrants make up roughly 8 percent of the city’s foreign-born population. The Vietnamese in Irvine are a smaller community than the city’s Chinese or Korean populations, and they are dispersed across neighbourhoods rather than concentrated in one district.
Is there a Little Saigon in Irvine?
No. The Vietnamese in Irvine do not have their own commercial enclave. The original Little Saigon lies a short drive north in Westminster and Garden Grove, and Irvine families travel there for Vietnamese groceries, restaurants and Tet shopping while living among Irvine’s planned villages.
Why did Vietnamese families move from Little Saigon to Irvine?
The main draw is education. Irvine’s public schools, including University High and Northwood High, rank among the best in California, and second-generation Vietnamese professionals moved south to put their children in those attendance zones. Low crime and new housing reinforced the appeal.
What is the connection between UC Irvine and the Vietnamese community?
UC Irvine, founded in 1965, is central to Vietnamese life in the city. Its Vietnamese language programme has served nearly 5,000 students since 2000, it houses a Southeast Asian Archive, and its large Vietnamese American student body draws families to settle in surrounding neighbourhoods.
Where can you find Vietnamese food in Irvine?
The Diamond Jamboree centre at Alton Parkway and Jamboree Road is the hub, home to restaurants such as Pho Saigon Pearl. Other spots like 399 Vietnamese Kitchen at the Market Place serve pho, banh mi and spring rolls in Irvine’s polished shopping centres rather than on a dedicated strip.
When did Vietnamese refugees first come to Orange County?
The first wave arrived after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, with roughly 50,000 refugees processed through nearby Camp Pendleton. By the end of 1976 about 12,000 Vietnamese refugees had settled in Orange County, mainly sponsored by churches, laying the foundation for today’s communities including the Vietnamese in Irvine.
If your family’s story passed through Irvine, or any of the places Vietnamese have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a refugee tent at Camp Pendleton to a Northwood school zone, to wherever you are now.