When Daniel Chen was a Portland State University student, he longed for a good Chinese restaurant near campus.
Ten years later, he’s taken matters into his own hands. Chen, the co-owner of Hillsboro’s highly regarded Szechuan Garden, has returned to his old stomping grounds with Tasty Corner, a new restaurant serving a slimmed-down “greatest hits” menu of dishes from Sichuan Province and beyond.
Much has changed in the past decade. Since 2016, the Portland State area has had a very good nearby Chinese restaurant in dumpling specialists Duck House. But despite purposefully toning down the spice, Tasty Corner’s take on Sichuanese cuisine shows a level of skill more commonly seen at westside restaurants such as Taste of Sichuan or Chen’s own Szechuan Garden.
Chen, who previously managed Southwest Portland’s Szechuan Chef (one of several local Sichuan restaurants with roots in Bellevue, Washington), and business partner Yuangming Li of Arcadia, California, had hoped to open a downtown location even before the pandemic. This corner space — the former Chit Chat Cafe, a Taiwanese restaurant and one of the only bubble tea cafes around Portland State when Chen was a student — became available in June of 2020.
“At that moment, because this is 2020, the whole campus is empty,” Chen recalled. “It’s quiet. It’s just dead. There was nobody there. But we thought, ‘That’s a good spot. Even if nobody wants it, we should just take it.’”
After negotiating the lease, Chen waited six months to obtain a permit, then six more to finish a full remodel, including an overhaul of the kitchen. The restaurant opened in early summer.
Tasty Corner’s menu is slimmer than the one at its Hillsboro sister — “there’s no intestine,” our server said, explaining one big difference — but you could still spend 20 minutes flipping through its laminated pages. So far, my favorite bites have come from the traditional Sichuan dishes, particularly the mapo tofu, with appropriately medium firm tofu swimming in fragrant chile oil and ground pork, and the hot and spicy “dried pot” dishes, including prawns, lamb, fish, chicken wings and juicy chunks of bone-in pork rib wok-fried with just just enough salt, chile spice and Sichuan peppercorn to make your lips tingle.
Hand-shaved noodles are another house specialty, served here with a choice of veggies, meat or seafood. These noodles, which are trimmed off a lump of dough directly into boiling water using a special knife and a motion similar to peeling a potato, are quickly chilled then tossed in a sauce that’s milder than the handful of dark red dried chilies might lead you to expect. They’re chewy and delicious. You’ll also find crispy noodles, spicy dan dan noodles and both wonton and braised brisket noodle soups, though we haven’t had a chance to try those.
Chen, who is Cantonese, asked his Sichuanese chefs to tone down the spice, hoping to appeal to a broader clientele. In practice, that means it takes a little more time to work up a sweat. He also added more vegetarian dishes, including nicely cooked snow pea leaves in garlic sauce and a sweet eggplant and fried tofu dish with triangles of sauce-soaked fried tofu and sliced purple eggplant, some pieces softer and more slender than others. There’s a small appetizer list of traditional cold dishes, including some refreshingly spicy smashed cucumbers, and dumplings too, though so far I’ve preferred the soup dumplings and wontons in chile oil at Duck House.
And that could end up being the best way to treat the two restaurants, heading to Duck House for dumplings, and Tasty Corner for Sichuan dishes. As a student, Chen longed for a good Chinese restaurant near campus. Now there are two.
Tasty Corner is open for lunch and dinner from Thursday to Tuesday (closed Wednesdays) at 624 S.W. Hall St., 503-954-1835, tastycornerpdx.com.
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com; @tdmrussell
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