Orient Express

The environment of the restaurant is a unique blend of Asian-Western themes in an old passenger train cart.
When we arrived here, the first thing I noticed was how large and long the area is inside! It can be quite easy to get lost when looking for the restroom and finding your way back to the entrance, but it's all worth it.
The food portions were way larger than expected, and at a low price.
It tasted all right, for the cost. The staff here were kind, and serviced us in a timely manner.
There's also a mini-bar, a few slot machines and private party rooms to host.
I recommend trying Orient Express whenever you are in the Seattle area looking for Chinese food.

Orient Express is a unique Chinese restaurant and lounge, with private karaoke rooms.
They are conveniently located a 5-10 minute walk from the SODO Link light rail station, and they have a parking lot. This is a review of their karaoke rooms. Overall, I was impressed.
As long as every member of your party spends a minimum $25 on food, there is no room fee and you can stay in the room as long as you want.
(With tax and 20% gratuity fee, it came out to just under $35/person total.) It's a fantastic value for the money IF you really love karaoke and will sing for 3+ hours.
We were there for 6+ hours and sung until our voices died. I heard from some friends before that the food was "meh," but we all thought it was pretty decent family-style Chinese food.
The karaoke menu is more limited than the main restaurant menu, but still had plenty of options.
Some hits were the salt and pepper shrimp, garlic eggplant, and beef dishes.
Most dishes on the karaoke menu are about $18-22, so when we all ordered at least $25/person we had so much food that no one left hungry. It's a very quirky place! The building is composed of several train cars with a restaurant/kitchen smack dab in the middle, and walking around the hallways feels a bit like a maze.
The room was clean, the bathrooms were small but tidy, and the staff were very polite and helpful even though we had a huge rowdy party. (Note that I don't think this is ADA accessible: You have to walk up stairs to enter the building, and many of the hallways are too narrow with sharp turns for a wheelchair.) We were in the VIP room with 25 people.
(The staff said we could fit up to 35, but 25 was definitely the largest I'd go before you run out of space/seating.) There was still lots of space to get up and dance.
But I'd go with a slightly smaller group (maybe 10-15 people) in a smaller room, so we don't need to hit the minimum 20 guests for the big room, and so everyone can sing more songs.
You can call ahead of time to make reservations, or walk in. The setup is good: dimmable lights, comfortable and flexible seating, two TV screens, strong mics, good sound quality.
The karaoke system is a weird/quirky Chinese one but at least it has the capability to pull up YouTube videos (only 1 at a time with ads and no queue though) from the touch screen on the side, so you could sing any song that you could find online.
It was a little annoying that the on-screen keyboard would only pop up if we went back to the menu, and the typing sound was super loud and couldn't be adjusted, but we got over it. Overall, if you were just going for an hour or two or for the food, then it's not really worth it.
But if you're hardcore into karaoke and want to sing in a private room until your lungs give out, the price is unbeatable! I would love to go back!

Owner response

Fun atmosphere, good food, great service.
The dinner special for 2 is actually affordable! Their hot n sour soup was delish.
I wish my entre came with a little bit of rice.
Environment is really cool when there's shows.
Ive yet to try the karaoke but its on the list.