When Patrick Herlihy moved to Portland in 2003, to be close to his daughter and ex-wife a decade after he’d retired from the US Navy, he wasn’t too fond of a restaurant near his place in Hollywood called Chin’s Kitchen. “There were just a few plastic chairs—you didn’t want to sit here,” he recalls, and the food didn’t make him want to come back, either.

After living elsewhere around the metro area, he moved back to the Hollywood neighborhood in 2023, and on walks he noticed something was different. The restaurant was still called Chin’s Kitchen (a landlord request, he would later learn, to match the antique neon sign), but it was clearly a different situation. He found the new Chin’s, which Wendy Li and her family took over in 2017, warm and welcoming, with food inspired by the cuisine Li grew up with in northeastern China.

Two years and an uncountable number of visits later, Herlihy, 64, is still working his way through the lengthy menu, often taking home leftovers from Chin’s generous portions.

Standard starter: “The hot-and-sour soup. I didn’t like it until I got sick with COVID for a month and a half,” says Herlihy. “All of a sudden I liked it.” He’s not a doctor, but he thinks it might have helped restore his health, too.

Menu maximalism: “I think the average person comes here and has the same three items over and over again,” he says of observing fellow diners. “I could be wrong. I could be generalizing.” Herlihy has his own favorites he regularly revisits, like the seafood and pork dumplings or the shrimp noodles splashed with chile oil, but has otherwise checked off most of the menu.

Taking a pass: The only thing he doesn’t think he’ll get again? The braised pork belly. “I still really liked it, but my body didn’t,” says Herlihy, blaming the slower metabolism that comes with age. “A young person can eat anything they want.”

Staying put: “I had never lived anywhere longer than three years because I was an army brat. My dad was in the army 34 years and I was in the navy for 15, so I was used to moving,” Herlihy says. “So I hated it here the first seven years, but I’d said wherever I turn 50 I’m gonna stay. So I did.” Since he's here for the long haul, he's especially happy Chin's is in walking distance, and he's a fan of the new bar space added over the summer, too.

A taste of the old country: “I guess I’m a meat-and-potato Irish guy, because it’s really similar,” says Herlihy, whose grandparents immigrated to the US from the
Emerald Isle’s County Cork. At Chin’s, “I love all their casserole dishes. The Chinese sauerkraut and pork stew, the stewed pork ribs and potato noodles…. I like the old Irish stew, but the Chinese is just as good—or maybe better!”