EnKore Karaoke

My experience with encore is not as bad as some Unilocal reviews. Singing for 3 hours cost us 25 bucks per person on a weekday night, 75 total for a medium size room, which is not terrible tho a little bit pricey. The Karaōke equipments are qualified, and we are so impressed that their Chinese song collection is sooo updated! A Karaōke place could be considered on the Ave.

Bring cash. They don’t accept credit cards, which I was not happy about.
No alcohol or outside food or drinks are allowed inside.
You can however order food off a menu from mee sum bakery underneath, but there is an extra service charge/​fee to be able to eat or drink it at Enkore. They also have a variety of canned drinks that are mainly Chinese or Taiwanese.
Don’t try to reserve for huge groups here in advance because they will try to lock for a certain amount of time. When the bachelorette party came, we got a big room for $ 40/​hr. Room was nice, but we also thought we would be there for 3 hours, but the group ended up wanting to stay for 2, which at first the guy was reluctant to let us pay for only 2 hours, but after 30 min, he came back saying we could.

Very bad attitude. It took forever for the guy to bring me the drinks. Actually, it has not come yet, after 1hr of waiting.

Terrible service and expensive. The guy sitting at the front desk only knows to get money. No service at all, no speaker tuning no mic cover provided before I asked. And even charged us 30minutes more than we were actually there.
Will never go there again neither recommend, the Bellevue one is much better.

Unfriendly employees and high fees. They include tips and tax rate is more than 10%. The mic is broken and they didn’t solve the problem. Never go again.

Terrible service, terrible audio. The fact that the rooms were practically empty during a Friday night is enough to testify. Will never go again.

Super nice employees and cheap price! Love to come back here to sing with friends! I would come every weekend!

The employee there probably thinks that they are the only good karaōke in Seattle so they just gave me fucking attitude. I don’t think this karaōke is worthy

This place rips people off, it looks like it wasn’t just me. Not a fan of dishonest businesses. The English selection is lacking and it’s really really hard to search for songs. Star Karaōke on the Ave near NE 50^th is much better and the people who work there are a lot nicer.

We were charged more than we thought and we weren’t even reminded how much time was remaining so they charged us for going over even just 15 min. We thought it would be only $ 20 an hour, but we were charged $ 32 total. Also, there wasn’t that much new English songs. The only good thing was the good music quality and MVs. Overall, still left unsatisfied.

This is a cute little spot with both old and new methods of song selection. Unfortunately they don’t serve alcoholic beverages here and parking can be difficult on University «the ave.» The good news is there is a bar next door and food all around, too. There is usually no wait to get a room so this spot is more convenient than other local spots.

The songs there are quite new imo, but the majority of the places that I’ve been to are outdated: x. This place also serves $ 8 Taiwanese beer (bottle), and they time it based on the minutes (lol, yup very detailed.). Let’s say the total bill ended up to be quite a lot, but I have no clue how much it was since my generous friend paid… :x This place is definitely more high-​end than the one in China town (but the price is higher as well).

I’m very disappointed ay this place. i called ahead booked for two hours karaōke time. i sing about two hours, one of stafff peek inside the room, so i thought the time is up. so we quickly stop and went to the counter. then we’re told we are charged for 3hours, cuz we’re 10mins over the time. WTF! No warning! no reminder! even we’re 10mins i can kind understand half hour charge, but the whole hour. this is some BS! NEVER COMING BACK AGAIN! CONSIDER ALL YOU GOT WARNED! AND FOR YOU ENKORE YOU JUST LOST A LOYAL CUSTOMER FOR EVER!

Enkore on the Ave hasn’t failed me yet. Thankfully!
I just feel bad for the people who have to sing around my room. I think people think I must be getting attacked or something. Cut a sister some slack, I just love me some Aretha Franklin! =p
Pricing for this establishment isn’t too awful. It is a little higher than some, but there’s a pretty good selection of tunes to jam out to, so it works itself out. I primarily sing in English but when I feel confident enough, I will sing back in Korean and Japanese. The equipment can take some getting used to but after a while, you don’t really care. You just wanna sing damnit!
I like this location better than the Bellevue one. I think the only hiccup is that if you aren’t super familiar with The Ave, then it will be kind of hard to find at first. But know this — its upstairs next to a bar called Earls.
Overall; With a bunch of friends? Split the cost and get to singing. Just… Don’t start twerking too much singing to Miley. Watch out now.

I’ve only been here once it was a great experience. The control system is kinda confusing but overall the song selection is good and I like how I can easily just adjust the volume. It’s quite sound proof unlike some karaōke places I’ve been to. I would definitely come back here again and there’s lots of cute eye candies to look at there ahaha: p

Next to Rock Box, this is another venue I often frequent, but more so with my Asian friends because it’s where most of the Chinese songs are. The location is on the second level between Mee Sum and Earl’s in the University District, so there is always easy access to bubble tea, snacks, and alcohol. The only alcohol the joint sells is beer.
Each room has a theme, but the one I frequent is the Mario Brothers room. The downside is that the songs are really old, but the upside is that it is cheap and does not require people to be 21+, hence it is in the college city.

Who’s up for late night karaōke? We are!
We made a spontaneous trip to the Ave after realizing that after a few shots… we wanted to sing! This made for a very interesting and fun Saturday night, for sure. We grabbed a few drinks downstairs at Earl’s to kill time before our 1 a.m. appointment for the room. We called ahead of time to make sure they had space available for us to sing. This is the Asian-​style karaōke where people get their own rooms to sing with their own personal TV and song menus.
The walls weren’t super sound-​proof, but they were good enough. We had a little trouble getting started because apparently they have two systems where you can look in the book and use the remote to order songs… or you can just use the screen with the remote. The one with the book has more Chinese songs, but we opted for the one with less since we were singing in English anyway.
They surprisingly had the actual music videos for some of the newer English songs like Nicki Minaj, Usher, etc… but of course for some of the oldies, they had random, weird music videos with scantily-​clad women. That was entertaining, I guess. You also can’t bring your own food/​drinks… they’ll charge you $ 10 per item if they catch you.
Their kitchen closes at 11 or something so we were bummed we couldn’t order food… but we left at 3 a.m., right before they start charging extra, and got Memo’s up the Ave.

All I have to say is I went to EnKore last night for my friend’s birthday. The musical singing experience was fine, comparable to other Kareoke places. It had a good song selection and our experience was consistent with what you’d expect on the Ave.
BUT…
I was thirsty for some fantastic Seattle tap water and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. When I went to the front desk to inquire as to where I might acquire such a delicious adult beverage to assist with my vocals, I was told that they do not have any. When I asked «why not?», I was told that it’s because they have it for sale in a bottle.
Phew. I’m not going back there on what seems to be principle. After I asked if I could put my mouth to the sink, the gentleman eventually gave in and gave me a cup. If the company wants to contact me after this review and say it changed the policy, I’d be happy to take it down. The takeaways from this EnKore experience were (1). plastic bottled water is bad for the environment in so many ways and (2). I’m not going to pay for water.
But enough about the music.

Last week, some friends and I decided to go Karaōke.
We had a reservation at Rockbox up on Capitol Hill. It turns out that one of our friends is one month away from turning 21 and he was not allowed to go karaōke with us there because of underage. I suppose the age restriction is related to its happy hour specials on Sundays. Anyways, we were not very happy about it and decided to try this place out on the Ave.
We called ahead and made a reservation about 45 minutes in advance.
It is located between 43^rd and 45^th on the Ave. Our private room is pretty clean. Though you can occasionally hear people singing from next door/​room. The staff is friendly and explained how the machine/​equipment works to us. He was also happy to split the checks for us in the end.
They have two huge books with tons of songs to choose from manually. Most of them are Korean pop but they do have a good selection of American pop.
We went there on a Sunday so it was $ 20 per hour for 4 persons.
I would come back here again!

Anyone who rates a karaōke place like this low, doesn’t actually like Karaōke and/​or doesn’t realize how good they have it in the city.
Private rooms, decent song selection, really nice new equipment, cheesy videos, and super cheap! It’s pretty hands off service because it’s karaōke, but even still, the service was extremely friendly.
It loses a star because some rooms are cramped if you have more than 6 people, the song selection could be a little better (but I still think its pretty good for what it is), and I’m not sure if there is drinking or not even with a banquet license. I’ll have to look into that.
Ignore the drunk folk lurking in front of Earl’s and go here!