I’ve eaten at Chin’s Kitchen more times than I should have over the last decade, considering the sad state of its cuisine. But I’m often in the Hollywood District; I love Chinese food of all stripes, and have long been drawn to the fabulous retro neon sign on the front, featuring Mr. Chin eating from a bowl like a Route 66 sign on the Silk Road.
After numerous sad plates of generic fried shrimp and twice-cooked pork not worth a second look, I’d walked away for good (or so I thought). But in late July, Ted Perkins from the Hollywood Star dropped the news that Chin’s Kitchen had new owners and was up to something special.
Soon after, the new version of this 1949 Portland classic was overrun, and sisters Chang Feng (Wendy) and Change (Cindy) Li were selling out of their Northeastern Chinese dishes for days on end. Portland, it seems, is hungry for Dongbei cuisine, featuring foods that blend the anise and cumin of China with the fermentation and gut-fortifying influence from Russia.
In LA, there are enough Dongbei-specific restaurants to prompt Top 10 lists, but Chin’s is seemingly the only one in Portland, leaving the Li sisters to be the standard bearers of their fare. After (mostly) adjusting for their newfound popularity, they’re doing just that.
