Chen's Lucky Cafe — Restaurant in Portland

If you’re not Chinese, it’s probably difficult to fully appreciate this place for the absolute diamond-in-the-rough that it is. The owners have imported a rice mill and a steamer direct from Taishan (the origin of cheung fen as a street food) and make THE BEST, most authentic cheung fun from scratch, every day. They soak the rice, mill it, and make beautifully translucent and delicate cheung fun to order. It is NOT vegetarian (they grease their pans with lard). It is, however, mind-blowingly good and blows all other cheung fun in Portland out of the water.

This is a classic hole-in-the-wall. The tables are a bit oddly placed, the hours wonky on Google and the sign on the door can itself be a bit off. But IF YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW. There is no point ordering anything other than cheung fun at this restaurant. The pork-and-egg are classic, the beef brisket is crazy good. I went with my brother and parents and we ate until we had to roll ourselves out the door. And my parents went back by themselves the next day, so this authenticity is parent-approved. It’s basically impossible to find street food like this outside of Taishan.

Also, the owners are super proud in the freshness of their ingredients and cooking processes. He showed me the equipment in their kitchen and the back of the house is SPOTLESS.

Highly recommend, but you kinda need to know what you’re seeking in order to...

As soon as I entered the restaurant, the owners wife runs over and starts yelling at me that there's no outside food allowed as I proceeded to show her the book I had got from Powell's in the small lunch sized paper bag I had that said Powell's on it. I wasn't sure if I was hungry or not so I went and played video lottery and ended up winning $100 and bringing it up front to the counter and after I handed her the ticket she throws my money on the counter without even handing it to me and storms off after I had asked if I could take a look at it to go menu when she clearly was ignoring me and upset that she had to pay money to me from winning on video lottery. Would highly recommend not coming into this place it's not worth it there's so many other good family restaurants in the area that have better Chinese food like China Star on Southeast 122nd...

I got the kung pao chicken, and it didn't disappoint. The portion size is very generous. Certainly enough for two meals or two people if you order an extra serving of rice. The flavor was pretty good, and I enjoyed the mix of vegetables and chicken. I'll be back at a later date to try some of their other menu items.

While ordering I noticed two things about the restaurant: 1) They have a sign next to the register with lunch specials and other items not on the menu that you can order. 2) They're new and don't have a card reader yet, so it's cash only for now.

Edit: The restaurant has a...