Orange King

I’m transferring from UW after this summer and I’m so sad I haven’t tried Orange King out until now! I haven’t tried their burgers yet, but their teriyaki and chicken Katsu is delicious. You get good portions for what you pay for and the staff are very sweet people. this is definitely becoming a regular for me to make up for all the lost time.
The restaurant is very cozy and it’s also a good place to hang out or study. The only think I don’t like is it’s a bit unclean. There are flies flying around which bug me (no pun intended) so I prefer to take my food to go.

I went to this place with my friend and ordered teriyaki chicken to go. Found the button of the bread rotten when I finished the rest. Use your own judgement and think before you go.

the food is okay, but the tables are so dirty and uncomfortable to sit on, the glass on the table doesn’t even color the entire table, so you would be touching the dirty table underneath the glass when you eat.

I’m finding it hard to write a review for this place because it just feels like another place on the Ave that I go to when I absolutely can’t think of anything else or have exhausted all of my other options.
This place has a whole variety of options from teriyaki to burgers to katsu to ramen and the restaurant itself is a quite cozy and homey feeling. The portion sizes are very large. I ended up having a teriyaki plate and it’s just as one might expect a teriyaki plate might be, no frills and decently priced.
This place is nothing to write home about but certainly an option when looking for something else to eat for once on the ave.

I’m giving this 4 stars because the chicken katsu plate portion is seriously crazy massive :) It is definitely the most generously portioned pile of chicken katsu goodness and football shaped pile of rice I’ve ever had. And, it’s pretty good. Not best ever but certainly an awesome deal for the price of $ 8.99! Lightly battered and crispy and hot, well cooked rice, simple fresh salad, and one yummy little gyoza :)
The chicken yakisoba was also pretty generously portioned for the price of $ 7.99. Lots of noodles, delicious teriyaki chicken atop, some bell peppers, onions, cabbage and pretty good flavor overall.
I also just am drawn to this place cause it’s just cozy (small, warm, strand of lights around the window), low key, with a friendly host and hard working middle aged mom and dad working in the kitchen. The food is fill –up-​your –tummy pretty good Asian food with good flavor, fresh ingredients, and a low price with no frills. Most of the places that are quick and cheap teriyaki places are sort of cafeteria style and definitely not cozy. This place is unique in that it has sort of an old school mom n pop unassuming charm.
Will be back if I need a quick bite around the UW area. :)
The biggest con is that it could definitely be cleaner!

They won’t be winning any clean restaurant awards but the burgers are good!

I’m in search of the best burger in Wa state, this place is not it. But, the burger is not bad, decent size and tasty. I would definitely come back here.

Average spicy chicken teriyaki, decently priced. No bells and whistles. Not much to write home about.

Ordered Orange chicken and sweet&sour chicken last time– didn’t taste that great. The chickens are small and over fried. heard they have good burgers though. Good service!

Been here a couple of times and it was not anything special, compared to other teriyaki joints down the Ave. It was slightly more expensive, and the interior of the restaurant felt cramped. I’ve seen that it is packed during lunch time. I’ve only ordered takeout, and both times I thought the food was decent but again, nothing that wowed me. They are fairly generous when it comes to the servings of meat on the teriyaki plates.

I wasn’t that impressed with the food. The price isn’t horribly expensive, but the food was pretty lackluster. The «salad» that comes with teriyaki dishes is actually half green salad and half macaroni salad, and I really don’t like macaroni salad. I would not have expected macaroni salad in a teriyaki dish, and had I known I’d have asked them to leave it out. The chicken itself was decent, if a little dry, except parts of the chicken were gristly.
Also, they didn’t seal the takeout carton properly so when I got back to my office to eat it, sauce had leaked all over the carrier bag and the macaroni salad got mixed in with the rice.
Considering the variety of Chinese and Japanese restaurants on the Ave, I’ll try others before going back here.

The portion size is one of the largest on the ave and tastes pretty good too. It’s really cheap and the lady is pretty nice. They have many innovative dishes and they are generally well-​made.

Around 2010 – 2011, they had this family who owned the place that made me and my friends visit this place ALL the time. The owner’s son was this video game /​mmorpg nerd, and would talk to us about those games when we visited. He literally sat there, either at a table or being the counter grinding the games. He even called us noobs when we talked about Runescape lol… love that guy. During this same time period, the portions were big and they always gave out free soda with meals too. But, sadly, families who are generous like that usually aren’t good business people. They were too honest to turn a significant profit that justified the opportunity cost. (This is just me guessing).
I believed they changed owners twice since then. Now, the portions are much smaller (Maybe it’s just inflation?). I am a light eater and sometimes I don’t feel full. The old owners used to give a significant quantity of meats in the food. Now, the plate is filled mainly with rice /​noodles and veggies. I still think the food taste good, but my friends and I very rarely visit this place in the past 1 – 2 years. We literally go to every restaurant on the ave except this place.
Maybe I’m biased and the only reason we went to this place back then was to hangout that nerd guy, cause it was a very fun eating experience. Is it too short of a time ago to talk about the good old days? When the dirty old terry /​lander dorms still existed, and hanging out in those crappy dorms were indicative of the great people? Nowadays, South Campus is filled with these new (LUXURIOUS) dorms that sort of establishes these distant relationship between people. But I digress…
I still think this is a decent teriyaki joint, but it’s teriyaki and in my book very hard to justify a 5 stars. And there is nothing special about this teriyaki place from other places that makes it 4 stars. I don’t want to harm small businesses and families by given too harsh a review, because these are real lives being affected by reviews. In summary, this is a solid teriyaki place. The location is perfect. I just wish they put more meat in the food

I love their General Tso’s chicken! big portion and great flavor.
I like General tso’s chicken a lot and i’ve tried it from many different place and Orange King have me keeps coming back for it. I don’t know how its just good!

Like some wise old sage always said — «You never know whatcha got til it’s gone», this holds true with Orange King. I used to go to the University right next door, and this would be my quick-​fix lunches at least twice a month. At least.
Several Points of win:
Bang of Buck 10/​10, would bang (for buck) again.
Not-​dried-​out-​burgers. Harder to achieve at a short order joint than you’d expect.
Portions for two.
Choice of Pan-​Asian or Whitie food.
Seriously though, you’re paying sub-​10 for a lunch, and you get huge portions (either two chicken thighs of teriyaki/​katsu, a huge plate of fried rice, or a thick-​ass burger and a mountain of fries fit to give a caloric assault for seasoned competitive eaters), and the quality is really not that bad. They used to have crinkle fries, but when I came back once a week ago they had McDonald-​esque fries which were better. Don’t get me started on the Curly Fries; for me that’s like glitter makeup for a primadonna.
Not once in my years around UW have I ever gone to Orange King and been upset at what I received. Sure, it never blew me away, but fer chrissakes I wasn’t expecting Piece de Resistance Top Sirloin ground burgers with Essence D’huile White Truffles either!
At the same time, I can attest that not many others can make as damn juicy and messy of a burger as they can. Double Cheeseburger with Bacon? Yes please, best burger within 2 blocks of north Campus. It’d be nice if they had a Bleu Cheese Burger selection, but don’t worry, I’ve got Lu’s 7 blocks up to cover that ground.
Now that I don’t attend school at the U, I don’t have many chances to gt a quick (heavy) lunch at Orange King. I do miss it; don’t shun what you might not be able to have in the future, Orange King is all OK with me. (ha-​ha, get it? Orange-​King, O-​K, OK?) Yeah apparently at the same time I lost the opportunity to eat here, I also lost my humor.

I go to school nearby and I come here fairly often.
The service is good for most part because the manager is always greeting with a smile. Customers like that.
The food is not bad. I would recommend getting either burgers or korean dishes for some of their better tasting items. A few of my favorites here includes their rice pots, bacon fried rice, and grilled mackerel.
It’s not the best tasting or cleanest restaurant, but the service and the overall fairly delicious foods makes me go again and again.

I know what you’re thinking — how can a restaurant offer burgers, teriyaki and ramen and do everything at once? After all, it’s not exactly fusion, but completely separate cuisines. Strangely enough, it works.
The burgers are really solid and inexpensive, tasting homemade and the portions are quite generous. The teriyaki is great as well. The prices are super reasonable and, although there’s no table service, the employees (owners?) are really friendly. Basically it’s cheap, it’s fast and it’ll sate both your burger and teriyaki cravings. That makes it good in my book.

There’s nothing on the Ave that screams «mom and pop restaurant» like Orange King. Technically, it’s not even part of the Ave, but it’s close enough that I consider it to be on the Ave. But since it seems like there’s ever only two people running the place, I hate to not give them a good rating. It’s an okay restaurant, but probably not one of the best in the area.
One thing that I certainly don’t have a problem with is how the prices are low, and almost everything on the menu is under ten dollars. When their items are mainly burgers, ramen, and teriyaki, it’s not hard to keep the food cheap, but the point is that you can easily get a full meal here for under ten dollars including tax and tip. They have an HDTV, but the only sound they have appears to be classical music.
I’ve gotten their ramen before and it’s too similar to what I could just easily make myself at home by adding boiling water and spices to a pack of hard noodles, so they don’t seem to be worth five dollars. Their burgers are much better, but they still have some flaws. I ordered a grilled salmon burger here and it took over fifteen minutes to arrive. I don’t know why it should take that long to make a burger, and why other people who placed their orders after me got their food first. I also don’t know how they managed to burn the bun; one side of it had substantial charring and I wonder why even bothering to cook that part when it’s just bread.
Another thing they seem to have overcooked is the fries. They’re hard, dark, and burned. There doesn’t seem to be much potato in them, and they honestly don’t taste like much unless you add ketchup to them. On the plus side, the fries are quite numerous and only two dollars extra. They’re just not that good, but I know how easy it is to mess up fries and burn them.
I really don’t want to be so critical of a small and modest place such as this. They seem to be nice, honest, hard-​working people that are doing what they can to make a living and even asked me whether my food was good, as if expecting a positive response. I certainly found their food enjoyable, but it’s not the best I’ve had around here. Also, I have no idea why they’re called «Orange King.»

Teriyaki, Korean food, hamburgers and free wi-​fi — I can see the charm of Orange King, a humble and comfy café (a local institution) across the street from the University of Washington. The food is plentiful, cooked quickly and comforting. The walls are covered with pictures and flyers. Patrons can enjoy free, self-​serve hot tea and gochujang in plastic squeeze bottles.
* Tofu stir-​fry ($ 6.95): served with a huge mound of steamed white rice, the stir fry featured tiny bits of firm tofu, shredded cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms. It was good with gochujang… felt like something someone’s mom would whip up
* Deluxe burger: burger was cooked properly but the sesame bun was cold… not bad, not great

I like this place– it’s been relatively the same level of food since I started going in the 90’s– but I don’t get here often.
When I’m in the UD, I know that a fast, cheap lunch can be found here. The menu is a bit confusing at first, but take your time and review, there’s standard burger fare as well as the Asian standards.
I’ve had both and would recommend either.