The last two Chinese restaurants in Portland’s Chinatown hold on — and hope for a comeback
Most of the neon sign doesn’t light, graffiti covers the walls, and the place is no longer open for lunch. But the Republic Cafe — Portland’s oldest Chinese restaurant — is still operating.
The spot once attracted local politicians and visiting celebrities. On a recent Thursday, however, only a handful of delivery drivers and customers picked up to-go orders in a two-hour stretch. No one sat in the dimly lit booths.
Next door, business is also slow at Golden Horse Seafood Restaurant, the last place in the neighborhood where you can get a Cantonese lunch. One or two regulars still come in, but long gone are the office workers who used to fill the tables midday.
These are the last two Chinese restaurants in Portland’s 10-block New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District.
And they need some help.
Portland’s Old Town — a larger neighborhood that includes blocks south of West Burnside Street — still has Xin Ding Dumpling House at 71 S.W. Second Ave. and Mandarin House at 120 S.W. Ankeny St. Last year, GeekEasy Anime Cafe, serving primarily Japanese cuisine, opened at 310 N.W. Davis St. in the heart of New Chinatown/Japantown.
But decades ago, many more restaurants occupied Portland’s Chinatown. Next to the Republic stood House of Louie, which closed in 2018. Hung Far Low, famous for both its neon sign and stiff drinks, moved out of Chinatown in 2005 and closed permanently in 2015. Chen’s Good Taste closed about three years ago after the roof of its building collapsed. Also gone are Marco Polo Garden, Tuck Lung, Seven Star, Great China Seafood and Fong Chong.
Golden Horse and the Republic are the last of the longtime eateries serving a neighborhood that was home to generations of Portland’s Chinese and Japanese residents.
Neither restaurant has recovered from the pandemic years. The combination of COVID and Oregon’s short-lived experiment with decriminalizing small amounts of drugs was disastrous for the neighborhood, the restaurant owners said. Old Town has long had a reputation as a skid row, and some grit has always been part of its character. The pandemic years were different.
Things have improved in the neighborhood, the restaurants’ workers say — but customers have been slow to return.
The Republic Cafe
The owners of Republic Cafe, at 222 N.W. Fourth Ave., claim the restaurant opened in 1922. And although that is the year the building was constructed, when the Chinatown district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the paperwork listed the restaurant’s opening year as 1930.
Either way, Republic Cafe remains the oldest continually operating Chinese restaurant in Portland.
In its heyday, the Republic Cafe had one of the town’s swankiest cocktail lounges. Famous customers included Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Ginger Rogers, Victor Borge and Danny Kaye. Victor Wong, a longtime owner, was dubbed the “Mayor of Chinatown” in the 1950s, an unofficial title he held for decades. The place stayed open until 4 a.m. on weekends, and patrons flooded in after other bars closed.
Sue Mui and her husband have owned the Republic Cafe for about 30 years. It was still booming when they took it over, but the pandemic was a turning point. Afterward, she stopped opening for lunch and shifted to evening-only service.
“I think people are kind of scared coming down here,” Mui said. “It’s so hard because there’s so many problems outside.”
The restaurant lists a 5 p.m. opening time, but in practice, it opens whenever the Muis arrive to start filling the handful of online orders for the night.
“And then I just sit right here and wait for the customers,” she said from her perch behind the front counter.
Heather Ragonese started working as a bartender at the Republic’s Ming Lounge about nine years ago. She got the job after the previous bartender was punched in the nose on shift and quit.
“I have to keep believing there’s a lot of people who genuinely care about this neighborhood and this space,” she said. “There’s hardly a night that goes by that somebody doesn’t come in and thank us for being here and keeping this place alive. That keeps us going.”
Her husband, Mykal Ragonese, often stops by the bar in an unofficial capacity to check on her and make sure both employees and patrons are safe.
“It’s always been on the fringe, but since the COVID era, things really went over,” he said. “I feel like this neighborhood’s still recovering from that. But we’ve seen a big difference, especially this past year. It’s a lot better.”
The Ragoneses have infused a punk-rock vibe into the Ming Lounge. Photos from concerts hang beside Chinese tapestries. Red lanterns cast moody light alongside a plastic skeleton hanging behind the bar.
On Tuesdays, an unexpected underground scene blossoms inside the aging restaurant when “Headspace Circus” takes over the lounge with electronic music and art. In a back room, DJs spin music while people dressed as goths, clowns and rave kids dance and create art along a craft table. It’s the one night of the week the place draws a crowd.
“In New York City, in San Francisco, Chinatown is just cool,” Mykal said. “Chinatown’s always been affiliated with hipsters and punk rock, and it’s the same here in Portland. This is, to me, one of the coolest places in Portland. It’s so special — it’s the bridge between the past, present and future.”
Golden Horse
The bulk of Sophy Li’s adult life has revolved around Golden Horse Seafood Restaurant at 238 N.W. Fourth Ave.
Golden Horse opened in 1998. Li immigrated to Portland the following year with her parents from Taishan in Guangdong Province, China. Working at Golden Horse was her first job in the United States — in fact, it’s been her only job.
“We know all the guests. It’s like our life surrounds this location,” Li said in Cantonese through an interpreter. “So we don’t want to close it down. I’m emotionally attached to it.”
Li was 20 years old when she first started as a server at Golden Horse. It’s where she met her husband, who serves as the chef. The couple eventually bought the restaurant. Regular customers remember when she was pregnant with her first son. Today, her two sons are in their 20s. Both graduated from college and pursued careers in computer science; neither is interested in taking over the restaurant. Li is proud of that; she never had the chance to go to college herself.
Since the pandemic, Li estimates business has only recovered to about 70% of pre-COVID levels, at best. Golden Horse once stayed open until 11 p.m., but now Li closes at 9 p.m.
“I feel the pressure of coming to work every day,” Li said. “I have to check my windows, whether they are broken. I fixed one window two months ago, and it is broken again. The look of the street scares customers away.”
Golden Horse offers a large Cantonese menu – the seafood dishes and Beijing pork are popular – alongside Americanized dishes like orange chicken and General Tso’s. Golden Horse is known as one of the few restaurants that serves chicken feet, a Chinese favorite.
Li worries about the business’s future. Her husband will likely retire in the next few years, she said, and she’s not sure she could find a buyer.
“Since I don’t own the building, no matter how much I love this place, if my husband retires and no one is interested in buying the business in this environment, then I have no choice but to close it down,” she said.
Until then, they stay because they know the place – and their customers.
“I spend more time here than at my house,” Li said. “It’s hard for me to let go.”
Bringing customers back
Over lunch at Xin Ding Dumpling House in Old Town, Peter Yue, a Portland design consultant and art director, said he’s eagerly awaiting the arrival of “Chinatown 2.0.”
Yue was among the team of creative professionals that started Four Oceans One Family, a workspace and gallery named for the Chinese idiom that’s painted on one side of Portland’s Chinatown gate. He sees potential in Chinatown and wants to see the neighborhood transform into an AAPI business incubator with a vibrant arts scene.
“You’re talking to an artist, so I’m always going to believe that art will push it through,” he said. “It gets sketchy, people squat, but then the artist kid, the rock ’n’ roll kid, the skateboard kid all move down there because it’s cheap rent. They put a mural on the wall, and then all of a sudden, more art goes up. It makes it feel safe and cool and hip.”
Art has been part of the strategy to lure back customers. Golden Horse has received about $70,000 in assistance through various city programs, which funded a large mural by artist Alex Chin on the exterior, along with interior upgrades and vandalism repairs.
The economic development agency Prosper Portland provided $300,000 to restore and repair the Chinatown gate at Northwest Fourth Avenue and West Burnside Street, and $240,000 to extend hanging lanterns over three additional blocks between Burnside and Northwest Davis Street.
Since 2020, Jessie Burke, chair of the Old Town Community Association, said the association has worked with — and in some cases managed — about $4 million in building-improvement projects in the neighborhood.
“Of the businesses that are here, I think they are a really authentic part of the neighborhood,” Burke said of the two restaurants. “These are tried-and-true small business owners who have weathered a terrible storm of COVID, and this is a Portland neighborhood they have cared so much about.”
Outside the Republic Cafe, Mykal Ragonese pointed to the horizontal neon sign that runs along the building, connecting to a vertical sign that reads REPUBLIC. During the pandemic, he said, people broke off pieces of the sign’s glass tubing to use as drug pipes. Today, only the “cafe” portion still works.
Just this month, Prosper Portland approved a $19,000 grant for the Republic Cafe to add an awning, which they hope will reduce vandalism to the restaurant’s roof and sign. But estimates to fully restore the aging neon have been close to $100,000. The owners hope to find grant money for that work and are selling T-shirts and tote bags to raise funds.
“Just having that sign lit up would make such a big difference,” Mykal said. “People way down on Burnside could say, ‘Hey, what’s down there?’ It would be like a beacon of hope.”
