Is Dynamic LINQ still in use and suitable for narrowing-down search results?

You can solve it by building the needed predicate expressions dynamically, using purely .NET framework.

See code sample below. Depending on the criteria, this will filter on multiple properties. I've used IQuerable because this will enable both In-Memory as remote scenario's such as Entity Framework. If you're going with Entity Framework, you could also just build an EntitySQL string dynamically. I expect that will perform better.

There is a small portion of reflection involved (GetProperty). But this could be improved by performing caching inside the BuildPredicate method.

public class Item
{
    public string Color { get; set; }
    public int Value { get; set; }
    public string Category { get; set; }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var list = new List<Item>()
        {
            new Item (){ Category = "Big", Color = "Blue", Value = 5 },
            new Item (){ Category = "Small", Color = "Red", Value = 5 },
            new Item (){ Category = "Big", Color = "Green", Value = 6 },
        };

        var criteria = new Dictionary<string, object>();
        criteria["Category"] = "Big";
        criteria["Value"] = 5;

        var query = DoDynamicWhere(list.AsQueryable(), criteria);
        var result = query.ToList();
    }

    static IQueryable<T> DoDynamicWhere<T>(IQueryable<T> list, Dictionary<string, object> criteria)
    {
        var temp = list;

        //create a predicate for each supplied criterium and filter on it.
        foreach (var key in criteria.Keys)
        {
            temp = temp.Where(BuildPredicate<T>(key, criteria[key]));
        }

        return temp;
    }

    //Create i.<prop> == <value> dynamically
    static Expression<Func<TType, bool>> BuildPredicate<TType>(string property, object value)
    {
        var itemParameter = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TType), "i");

        var expression = Expression.Lambda<Func<TType, bool>>(
            Expression.Equal(
                Expression.MakeMemberAccess(
                    itemParameter,
                    typeof(TType).GetProperty(property)),
                Expression.Constant(value)
            ),
            itemParameter);

        return expression;
    }
}