DIVERSION PDX: CHINA RIM

"Can you do chicken and eggplant?"
"Yes!  We do!  It very good!"

(c/o Michael S. on Yelp) the interior, which shows that
basically NO ONE eats in here.

I wouldn't normally go off-menu at a Chinese restaurant, but China Rim's menu is egregiously limited.  We even called ahead to see if there were any seasonal specials, but were informed there were not. It's been rough ordering Chinese in this neck of the woods, as the quality of all four of the current providers have fallen off substantially.  Two antiquated mainstays, Wan Q and Chiam, have somehow persisted in their gleaming mediocrity since I was in high school, and the newer shining star, Taste of Sichuan, which started off strong, has devolved into a producer of appallingly greasy and flavorless slop, and compounding its disgracefulness by serving its take out in black plastic take-out containers rather than the classic white cartons, as it should be.  Even worse, it currently scores a 76/100 with
the health department, when a 70 will shut your operation down, so.... yeah.  So the final option (aside from a Panda Express, which in my opinion doesn't even count) is China Rim, which has displayed a spastic roller coaster of quality and execution varying from visit to visit, as well as the aforementioned paucity of offerings.  But you can only choose from what there is, so the latter seemed be our best shot.

And luckily, it put out.  Funny when we went to pick it up, though, there WAS a list of specials hand-written on the door.  I guess ordering over the phone has its linguistic glitches.  But Pam (the owner) was ebulliently enthusiastic about the final price of our large order: the total amount shared the last four digits of our phone number, a coincidence she was certain would bode well for us in the new

Black Mushroom with Bamboo

 year.  Maybe that's why the food this time was significantly improved.  My dad insists, every time, on the House Special Show Mein, which is absolutely the most unspecial special I've ever seen, yet I have to hand it to them for consistency: it is inevitably a primarily bland tangle of spaghetti-like noodles tossed with soy and scallions, maybe a little sesame and the classic chicken/beef/shrimp triumvirate that elevates none of the components but does provide variety.  Better was the black mushroom (shiitakes) with bamboo, although it needed to be listed as pea pods with 'shrooms and bamboo, because they comprised 50% of its makeup.  Little gloppy on the sauce, too, but China Rim

Prawn with Green Vegetable

 is unabashedly Chinese-American, so while it is no way authentic or purist, it's mostly pretty tasty.  (At least this time.).  Prawn with green vegetables might've been the best example of why we felt content with our choice: the prawns tasted really fresh, as did the melange of green: broccoli, boy choy and pea pods- and some squiggle-cut carrots and crispy water chestnuts thrown in for good measure.  Again, too much cornstarch in the cloaking sauce, but using a slotted spoon to serve ameliorated some of that.




Beef with broccoli featured really tender strips of meat, although the broccoli got a little overcooked.  The best dish, though, was our special-request chicken and eggplant, which could've been a lot spicier (as the eggplant dish on the menu was denoted with a little chili pepper warning of heat), but it was really flavorful, the silkiness of the eggplant nestling morsels of chicken quite nicely, and zipped up with a little spicy heat and shreds of fresh, snappy green onion.

Even the fortune cookies seemed fresher, and their messages were super random and quirky: certainly different from the generic ones to which I am accustomed.  Mine said I would receive a nice compliment, specifically on Friday, so I had to wait a few days to look forward to that (and I actually did get one!).  But to China Rim, this time at least, I will impart mine, as the current front runner amongst the slim pickings of suburban NW Portland.  

CHINA RIM 

• Phone number tel. (503) 626-8883