Chin's Kitchen — Restaurant in Portland

Very disappointed. Food was not good (and this is the most diplomatic way of rating it — will spare more colorful language). One star for a restaurant out there just trying to survive, and another for giving Northeast Chinese dishes a try. Nothing more. I was left extremely disappointed, but at least I learned something. In Chinese, we say 吃个明白 (roughly, "we ate our lesson").

As a Northeasterner, we're used to very low representation among cuisines. Despite whatever cuisine specialties they claim, Chinese restaurants (just like ethnic Chinese themselves) in the US were historically dominated by Cantonese families, giving way in recent decades to Fukienese (Fujianese) families that have since cornered the Chinese-Japanese AYCE buffet option that you can now find everywhere. In any case, I was very excited after moving to PNW to find that there was an option here in Chin's Kitchen. I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps, in the foodie town that had already embraced jianbing, they maybe started to accept NE as a distinct cuisine? The owner here who took over a couple years ago no doubt wanted to add some specialities from our region, so he added a few (just a few) specialties into the mix.

I was told that the staple/representative dish 锅包肉 was only available on Wednesdays, and only by pre-order. Already a bad sign. The reason given? It's difficult to make. Wrong. The real reason is that it loses its texture almost immediately after it's cooked, and most restaurants therefore try to persuade folks not to order it to go. Can't do during the pandemic, obviously. They also missed out on a few other staples, so I just gave up.

The only Northeastern dish I ended up ordering was a 五彩拉皮 (btw, you don't have to read Chinese to know what I'm referring to... just copy/paste into Google). The actual cost of raw material is nearly negligible for this dish. It's all labor (needs a lot of manual knife work). The knife work wasn't great (big, chunky, uneven slices). They also omitted the meat (forgivable), egg, and woodear. I added these myself at home and re-mixed the sauce for a brighter taste.

The 鱼香肉丝 Pork with Garlic Sauce was atrocious. What was supposed to be a mix of bamboo shoots, woodear, peppers, scallions, on a spicy vinegar/soy/sugar/garlic base (sometimes with cilantro) was essentially pork, lots of carrots, unevenly sliced of course) on a tomato paste base, with an added dash of red food coloring. It was actually so bad that after a few bites, I just held it until morning, when I added whatever missing ingredients at home, RINSED the entire dish (mostly sauce) with water, and re-tossed it myself with the proper sauce.

土豆丝 was also so boring and uninspired. Again, the cost is not in the ingredients (just potatoes) but in the knife work. Venture a guess as to how that turned out? I couldn't help this dish too much as the critical process (soaking and rinsing i.e. de-starching the potatoes) wasn't done properly if at all. Worst of all, he used the starchiest Russets instead of a Yukon Gold or Red, so it just ended up with the texture of mush instead of crisp as is intended.

Why am I spending so long on this review? Why do I even care? Look, my family owned restaurants too. I worked at a restaurant starting at age 11. We know it's hard work every day. So it pains me to write this as much as it angers me. The anger part is because he's now exposing thousands of unsuspecting customers to their first experience of what's claimed to be Northeastern food, which is awful and gives all of us Manchurians a bad name.

The owner himself, who I caught a brief glimpse of, seemed nice. I wish him and the charming non-Chinese dude punching in the order (who spoke OK Mandarin) well. But I hope you understand (and I suspect you already know) that the food was awful.

For anyone who actually cares and has read up to this point, the only authentic place I've found so far is Szechuan Brothers up in Vancouver. You won't find any of the NE dishes there of course, but for the mainstays, they've been rock solid.

The...

Man I HATE leaving poor reviews, but I am honestly in shock at how someone could feel good about serving food like this. My dad had called me all excited to have us try this place after seeing them featured on food Network, and I have to assume some kind of huge change has happened since that show aired.

We ordered some pork and leek dumplings, orange chicken, and the beef and potato stew (delivery). The dumplings were the best part of the meal and the insides were juicy, but like everything they were criminally under-seasoned. The dipping sauce basically tasted like pure soy, something I'm not a fan of for dumplings (I prefer the tangy sour-spicy kind of sauce, but I know everyone has their own preference there so I won't fault it), and that combined with the unseasoned dumpling created an overload of salt.

The orange chicken had the most "flavor" of anything, but even then it just still felt bland. The sauce was watery and I'm sure that's what ensured the chicken wasn't crisp when it got to us. I'd never fault a place for something like food not being perfectly crisp when we order delivery-- so long as the food itself tastes good. In this case it was just another downside to a disappointing meal. There was plenty of orange flavor, just no basic spices. It's really a shame because I think it could have been a great dish; the orange flavor that was there had the beautiful notes of caramelized peel which I love finding in Chinese dishes.

The beef and potato stew was rough to say the least. The meat was tender, cooked perfectly, and ended up being the only part of the dish worth eating. This dish had the least flavor of all, and basically tasted like it had been stewed in water. The potatoes and carrots had been cooked to death and disintegrated when stirred. The broth really did taste like someone dipped a tea bag of ma and five spice into water for maybe 30 seconds so you just got a hint of flavor, like the la croix of broths. I added some of my own sauces in a desperate attempt to make the soup palatable, but even then I ended up just pulling the meat out to eat and ditching the rest.

This whole meal reminded me of when I had to eat "bland foods" after a surgery. If you're currently just out of surgery or are extremely sensitive to spices you may enjoy this food. I'm all for accessibility like that but generally 'bland' should be an option and not a default.

I don't understand what happened here because looking at older reviews makes me believe this place used to serve wonderful flavorful food. The techniques we saw in our meal hinted at the ability to MAKE wonderful, flavorful food. It feels like whoever's in the kitchen simply doesn't care anymore. I truly hope something changes for the better here, or maybe that we just caught them on a bad day, because this place should be a shining star of cuisine with all the years of tradition and recipes under its belt.

Like I said, I HATE leaving bad reviews, so I hope my comments are not seen as an attack but taken as constructive criticism to move forward with. Otherwise I feel like this place can only coast on their old positive reviews for so long before the current quality catches up and they lose all their business. As it is now, I feel like we threw money down the drain eating here.

Edit: I forgot about the rice! The rice is very tasty and...

I also hate leaving bad reviews for local businesses but to charge as much as they do to put that low of quality out is just wrong. Been here a couple of times. The first time the braised pork belly was alright and the other dish was forgettable but we enjoyed the dumplings. This second time we got beef noodle soup and cumin pork, ordered it to go because I've been sick. I was so excited for that beef noodle soup. It's one of my favorite dishes and I was looking forward to how comforting it was going to be since I've been eating nothing but canned soup for days. Unfortunately this was the most bland and flavorless beef noodle soup I've ever had in my life. I've literally made better ones at home with recipes I've found on TikTok. Where is the star anise flavor!? I couldn't even taste a single bit of ginger or garlic. It literally tasted like low sodium beef broth poured over noodles with some beef and bok choy thrown in. Then literally two leaves, not sprigs but leaves, of cilantro was all it had. The meat clearly wasn't simmered in the broth as it should be. I ended up drowning it in hoison sauce just to give it some flavor. The only redeeming quality of this dish was the noodles. Which makes sense because the dumplings are good. They clearly know how to make good dough. But even if the dumplings are good they are super small for what you pay and are majority dough rather than filling. If it's gonna be $1.50 per dumpling then they shouldn't be so skimpy. Dipping sauce for the dumplings was also pretty much just straight soy. I prefer ponzu or something with rice wine vinegar personally but to each their own. My husband's cumin pork was $17.50 and didn't come with a side of rice. At that price I assumed that it came with a small side of rice. Overall I'm sad to say, this place is overpriced and...