Legin Restaurant

Soon to be bulldozed as part of a retirement cash-​out sale to the surrounding PCC campus, Legin is more than just one of Portland’s better cart-​style dim sum joints, but also the bustling, spacious heart of the 82^nd Ave «True Chinatown» cultural festivities. For dim sum, the variety of available morsels is impressive, and seating plentiful. A good place for large parties, with many tables built to accommodate 8+. Both Chinese and Americanized favorites are prepared to expectations. This was always an interesting destination for Chinese New Year, though it’s doubtful it’ll remain in business long enough for one last hurrah. Get it while you still can!

Legin is my favorite place for dim sum in Portland. Not quite as classy as Wong Kings but who wants to wait an hour just to sit down?
The freshness and tastiness of the food sure beats anywhere else I’ve been – dim sum in old town was stale and gross without even real cart service and other places on 82^nd haven’t lived up. You may not understand the cart ladies but for the most part you’re going to get something tasty no matter what. Try the BBQ pork buns, fried taro, and bean curd in broth. And I never go without the chinese broccoli (available on a cart, but you can ask for it when you sit down too) to break up all the meat and bread you’re going to be eating.
I can’t speak for it as a general restaurant but for dim sum it’s a winner, especially on those hung over weekend afternoons.

Been coming here almost every Sunday. Loves it’s spacious unlike other dim sum joint the table is too near apart n so crowded. I had my baby carseat with me and they almost run it over with dim sum cart .
The food is great, love the BBQ pork bun SO fresh!!! n chicken feet .
Service is fast and the dim sum cart lady is way friendly than Wong n ocean! This is why I keep coming back here .
Great food great service !
There is a bum on bicycle lingering in the parking lot asking for money n I kindly inform the host and they promptly send someone to the parking lot and check! Good to know they CARE!:)

Not a huge selection, but clean. Reminds me of a giant Chinese cafeteria. Tasty food though!

I have always liked Legin.
It really reminds me of places we used to go to in the Bay area, just neighborhood Chinese restaurants, as another reviewer pointed out. Not fancy, and not Americanized.
We have always liked the service and they have always treated us very well.
I think this is my favorite sweet and sour chicken, ever.
We used to get a lot of takeout from here when our baby was young, now our baby is old… and she loves the place. It’s just a little too far to go too often.
Last time we trekked here we had sweet and sour chicken, it was perfect, chicken with broccoli, also perfect (crispy perfect broccoli), steamed rice, nothing wrong with that, hot tea, barbecued pork, tender and tasty, and string beans, which were awesome. The little princess likes the egg drop soup a lot.
Sometimes I will duck in when I’m out that way and get a quick lunch, and it’s always decent. I usually get the eggplant thing when my family isn’t around. Yum.
I have had dim sum here, it’s not my favorite, but that’s another review of how picky I am about dimsum… get lunch or dinner instead. I do like the shumai.
And be careful where you park, last time my lunch companion got a ticket parking in the PCC side of the lot.

I’m pretty shocked by the low reviews. This is the best Chinese near 82^nd (which is Chinatown now soooo…)
This is my experience:
1) My boyfriend and I decide its a chinese food kind of day. Maybe we’re hungover or maybe we are simply feeling like we need a little indulgence.
2) We call and order. Food is always ready for pick up in 15 minutes.
3) We retrieve that hot food and indulge. Awesome General Tsos, Beef and Broccili has crisp, fresh broc & super tender slices of beef, Barbeque Pork is fantastic, also super tender and flavorful. These are the main dishes we order but have also tried the fried rice which isn’t overly cooked so it doesn’t feel heavy and greasy eating it. Also had some tasty egg rolls which were crisp and delicious (and greasy but ain’t that the way it’s supposed to be?)
4) Post consumption I never feel gross like some chinese makes me feel. Overall I feel like Legin’s food is fresher and lighter tasting than other places.
I will continue to make Legin my only destination for Chinese in Portland. Especially when you compare to nearby places (Hung Far Lo [awful] & Canton Grill [palatable]) this is the BEST.
ALSO, should you be in the mood for karaōke, it makes for an interesting drunken Saturday night. Lounge side also has food available until late.

The food was bland and flavorless. They tasted stale. I love dim sum and this was the most disappointed I’ve ever had to deal with.
The spare ribs lacks flavor.
The siu Mai was bland and smelled old.

I have been to this place twice in the last few years. The first time I went it was all right. Busy but the food was tasty.
I ventured to go in last night for some dinner. The restaurant was filthy. Tables, glasses, tea pots gross. All have leftover, stuck on food. The service was mediocre although they were good about keeping the water glasses filled.
I will definitely not be going back here. Once upon a time, this place may have been good but its heyday is officially over.
Save your money for a better Chinese restaurant, there are tons in this general area.

I wish Unilocal can allow us to give no stars. because that is what I want to give this place.
The food is so terrible and the whole place is dirty…
THANK GOODNESS (WORD ON THE STREET) THAT THIS PLACE IS SHUTTING DOWN.
I am so tired of coming here because most of the Cambodian weddings, birthdays, parties, etc., are held here and I don’t know why because this place is SOOOOOO GHETTO. WHY DO YOU WANT TO SUBJECT YOUR GUESTS TO SUCH DESPICABLE FOOD AND TO AN UNHEALTHY, UNSANITARY PLACE?
Our Cambodian community had an event in their banquet room on a Saturday this past year, and the morning we got there to set up for our event, the whole banquet room was not cleaned up from the night before! I don’t know if there was a wedding or party there the night before, but dirty dishes and utensils (with food still on them), dirty wine glasses, dirty napkins, were all piled up on all the tables. The establishment left it there from the night before! What the heck? Your establishment did not clean up after the event last night, and you left all that mess to stink up the whole banquet room and there must have been rats running around eating all the food that was left out overnight!
Now I can understand not cleaning up the night before if you had a house party and everyone got drunk, passed out, and had to clean up when they woke up in the morning, BUT THIS IS A RESTAURANT WITH THE PUBLICS HEALTH AND SAFTEY IN THEIR HANDS!
I only came here out of obligation, but now that it is shutting down, I praise God I never have to come here again!!!

The restaurant is currently closed for cleaning because cockroaches were found all over the kitchen. They also store raw meats next to fresh vegetables.

The food is always fresh and tasty and I have been enjoying coming here for almost 10 years. The salt and pepper squid has been a particular fetish, as are the sauteed string beans. Rarely am I disappointed by any dish.
The service is good with the waitstaff usually coming from southern China. Large parties can always be accommodated and the owner is not put out by the roaming of a small child here and there.
The décor is bizarre with, I kid you not, wooden clipper ships. My kids love looking at the seafood tanks and decorative fish at the entrance (good feng shui). Saccharine Chinese music sets the mood.
This is not a glossy place where one goes to impress, as the last renovation seems to have occurred in 1972, but rather a neighborhood establishment for the Asian folks of the 82^nd st. area — a constituency that puts high regard on value and good taste. Legin has banquet facilities should a wedding feast be needed.
The menu is huge and fairly priced and a meal at Legin, where there are no windows from the dining area, takes one on a pleasant journey far away from the gritty reality immediately outside the door.

I’ve given this place two chances now and every time I’ve hated it. Small portions, no sauce, pay extra for rice, nothing has veggies with it, and I don’t think the chicken dishes were actually chicken. The meat was hard to chew and kind of stringy. The taste was bad too, I’m done.

So one star, is for years of occasional laughter after thinking of Legin.
First off, I haven’t been here in about 4 years, and I’ll tell you why. I came once with a friend, and got hooked on the mongolian beef here. Came back 3 times with my husband, salivating over the addictive mongolian beef. It was so good, neither of us wanted to share, so we’d usually get bbq pork appetizer, and each get the mongolian beef. Yes, the same thing at a chinese restaurant, shame on us. Or so the waiter would have us think.
The last time we went, he tried to talk us into trying something different. We shyly said we just wanted the same dish, laughed off our own weirdness of ordering the same thing, saying how good the beef is. He tried like 4 times to talk us into it, then acted offended. I felt like maybe it was an insult in his culture, but we’d tried other stuff before, and really wanted the beef.
So then our bbq pork and meals come out, and we must have offended, because we got no sauce for the pork, it was overcooked, the beef tasted pretty BAD, which ruined the reason we’d come there, something was definitely different. And then I don’t think we saw the waiter until the end of our meal, when the waiter took our payment and said «Thank you, ladies» To my husband and I. It was totally a plural «Ladies» and not lady, we dissected it a few times while giggling profusely. Sometimes when we drive by, this is still a laugh for us, as my husband is not feminine looking, and had a beard at the time. Definitely good for a shared giggle every now and then.

Dim sum is always a step above the chinese buffet, but this left a little to be desired.
The service was much better than Wong King’s and the food quality was very good too.
But the downsides: the sign out front advertising cheap dim sum seems to be a bait and switch, this was so much more expensive than it should’ve been.
The rooms were really loud, so loud that we had to shout to hear each other across the table.
Unfortunately, a lot of the dishes came out cold. If they would’ve been hot I would’ve easily given a 3 or 4 star rating because they were so tasty!
I was also disappointed at the dessert selection, they didn’t have any of the cream filled buns at all, and those are my favorite.

i guess if you’ve only lived in portland and haven’t had dim sum anywhere else, this isn’t bad. OR if you’ve been elsewhere but are stuck in portland, you’re going to convince yourself that, this isn’t bad.
it’s not bad, but i’ve definitely had better in CA, TX, NY, LA… legin was pretty packed for a monday afternoon. the carts are pushed around until about 3pm. my main issue with this place was that the people pushing around the carts kept circling the 5 tables in the center. we were a bit farther back and only one cart was making its rounds out to us. in order to get what we wanted, we had to ask THAT person to flag down the others. and then we’d have to do it again 10 min later because we were still unacknowledged. apparently this IS the place to go to in portland for dim sum though. also the place to go to for banquets– so the wait for a table can be ridiculous during peak hours on the weekend.

The portion size is much larger than most places, and there is alway abundant seating.
The service lacks a smile here or there, but that’s very typical of Chinese restaurants.
Some of the plates are dry, but at least you know you will always have food.

In the context of Portland-​based dim sum, Legin ranks easily within the upper quartile.
Having said that, don’t go here expecting something straight out of Hong Kong or San Francisco.
Generally the service is efficient if not super friendly (and what good dim sum place has friendly service really?) and even if you don’t speak Chinese you can generally get to what you want with some pidgin English and hand gestures (and in my case really, really, really awful Cantonese).
Between Legin and Wong’s King (which is just a little further east on Division) we will opt for Legin hands down because of 1) there is no ridiculously long wait for seats, 2) there’s no Silicon Valley-​esque nouveau riche pretension, and 3) the comparable food quality.
Legin is a little more like old school Chinese restaurants with it’s darker interiors and murky holding tanks. I feel like it has lost a little bit of the retro charm with the new exterior paint job (I can no longer navigate visitors via the «giant pink pagoda looking thing») but I’m sure I’ll get over it. Most likely by stuffing my face with some more char siu.
This place is voted by my parents (who I consider my go-​to people for rating «authenticity») as the best place for turnip cakes. Wong’s doesn’t always have them, and Jin Wah’s are overly skewed in the turnip to rice flour ratio (not enough turnip).

I really like the dim sum at Legin. I have been several times, and it’s always been good. In Portland, I’ve also been to Wong’s King, and Legin is significantly better.
I have ordered tons of different things and have never been disappointed. It is most definitely not the best dim sum that I have ever had — but it’s the best that I have had in Portland. It didn’t seem overly greasy to me, and the options were okay. It wasn’t that busy during the week at lunch.
Now, as far as the service… not great. Not bad, but not great. But I had much worse service at Wong’s King — so again, vote Legin. If you’re looking for some solid dim sum — look to Legin. It’ll do the trick.

If you want Sunday Dim Sum BE EARLY! They do not keep full carts within 1 hour of ending Dim Sum service. Service is spotty at best. Mostly because the servers speak no or very little English. You can still order from the menu during Dim Sum events.
Friends from Beijing and other areas of China are very happy there. Original foods, care in preparation. If you speak Chinese you can get everything you want even off menu.

Friends are visiting from Seattle and wanted dim sum. We went to Wong’s King but the line was out the door. So we went to Legin for what I can only describe as thoroughly mediocre dim sum. There was nothing horribly wrong with it, but it just wasn’t great. The portions are smaller than I’m used to seeing. The shortribs were greasy, the steamed buns were a little undercooked and sticky, with a teaspoon of pork filling. The sesame balls were cooked in older oil and had the taste of many dishes in their crispy dough. The gai lan was covered in a syrupy sugary oyster sauce. We had quite a few dishes and none of it was outstanding.
The place filled up completely after 11 am, and they started to bring out more interesting and varied dishes but by then we were done. The barbeque duck and pork looks really good; they wheeled a rack of it through the dining room on the way to the barbeque shop and it did look tasty.
There is a bar to the right when you first come in and it makes the whole restaurant smokey and stinky. The place looks run down, don’t expect Wong King’s airline attendant dressed waitresses and waiters in clean white shirts and bowties. The staff were pleasant enough, with the usual scowl then followed by a half smile when you agreed to take a dish from the dim sum cart.
The only reason I would come back is if I couldn’t get into Wong King’s. But next time we’ll get our asses out of bed earlier and get to WK on time.