North Star Diner & Shanghai Room

So looking at the reviews, I noticed the older reviews from when they first opened were pretty bad. But the more recent reviews are decent. Figured I might as well try it. It was terrible.
So I got the fried steak thing with mashed potatoes and asked for no veggies and replace it with corn bread. The mashed potatoes? Came from a box. The gravy on the fried steak? Came from a box. The breeding? Boxed. Cornbread? Surprise surprise it came from a box. The mashed potatoes were gelatinous and kind of hard and sticky. The gravy had that film that happens when it gets left to sit for too long. The cornbread was burnt and realllly dry. The breading was nice though, but really greasy. Before I got halfway done, I was already feeling queasy.
My friend got the Reuben with fries. The meat was burnt and dry, which we found to be weird. The fries were just generic fries like from red robins. The sauerkraut wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good either. Just overall lacked flavor that would’ve made the sandwich much better.
Had to wait a long time for water refills even though I know the waitress saw the empty cups because I could see her look at the cups and walk away more than once. Only managed to get them refilled one time.
Won’t come back here. Overpriced mainly because 90% of the food comes out of a box. I could’ve made this at home. Safeway is right next door and the powdered mashed potatoes are like $ 1 and are a lot better than this weird generic stuff they make it with. The portions for the price were a little bit small but if everything had been made from scratch, then I could’ve accepted the price. But $ 14 for a meal that came out of boxes? Really not worth it. And if it didn’t come out of a box, then this place really sucks.

Alright, I’ve been here a few more times and I’ll say that the service bumps and bruises have been ironed out and the food, while simple and overpriced, has been consistently good. I only go here because of the proximity to my place, but the prices are a tad high for what you get.
TL;DR — It’s not the nightmare I first encountered, but for the price, it’s not worth it.

Great French toast and baked goods! Love the pancakes as well! Late night drinks and breakfast food, and remnants of Chinese décor = A+!

Seriously, if I lived here, I’d probably be a regular at the bar part of this business entity. Holy hell– Okay, so I was visiting with my best friend from San Diego and our Airbnb put us in this community, Greenwood. Being the drunkards, our first Unilocal search took us to Naked City (which is also pretty good), which then led us to some other bar, I’m blanking on name, which then led us to The Baranof… and with all the combination of different alcohols flowing through our system, my drunk friend thought to stumble into the North Star Diner for some late-​night munchies.
As she was taking a quick siesta while waiting for our food, I took notice to Shanghai room as I was walking around, looking for bathroom. I got to talking to some guy who introduced himself as «Tony» and asked us what we were in town for. I told him it was my birthday weekend, to which he invited us to Shanghai Room, but we were both pretty done for night, so I took the offer for the next night.
Next night– we’re there. Drinks are flowing, karaōke is karaōke-​ing, and its definitely packed. Tony and the bartender, Jimmy, took care of us out-​of-​towners and were very friendly and welcoming. Thanks for the great night. I think someone picked up our tab, but I felt like I still owed them something, so I brought some cash the next night just because it was a really good, memorable birthday.
On our way home, I asked my friend if food was good at North Star, since she had always gotten food there after every night we spent drinking, she confirmed it was. I think she got some club sandwich and also a tuna sandwich.
tl;dr. GO TO SHANGHAI ROOM.

Fantastic diner fare, without the greasy regret. Real butter, real maple syrup, fresh-​made donut holes! And the make-​your-​own breakfast burrito is amazing, to order.
The staff are friendly and the ambience is quirky. We went with our 3 month old baby and were happy to discover that the men’s room has a changing station.
As an all-​day breakfast lover with high standards, I was very pleased. I will be back to over-​eat challah-​bread French toast and creamy scrambled eggs.

A lot better than the Chinese spot that was previously here. My husband and I were immediately greeted and the server that helped us was really nice. The intergalactic motif makes the space more esthetically pleasing.
The food is pretty good on top of that. My husband had the Corn Beef Benedict and he said it was very tasty. I had the short stack pancakes with bacon all of which were tasty selections.
This place stands out because not only is it open 24 hours, it’s one of the few that are left in the area.

Great spot!
Love the constellation/​diner theme: comes thru in the menus, booths, and even astronaut coloring pages! Great branding from a business stand point.
The food: fantastic! Breakfast and lunch 24hours a day– great diner style food with great quality.
Take your friends, family, strangers– it won’t disappoint.

Been here a few times now! It’s my favorite neighborhood diner! The staff is so friendly and the breakfast is yummy. Always hits the spot. You must check out Saturday brunch in the bar… LIVE MUSIC!!! Holy cow blow my mind!

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
I’m not going to judge this place too harshly because it’s brand new, A for effort, but I’d like to express my concerns to the people running this place.
Pros: kept the arch thingy from the old Chinese place, looks very cool.
The tablecloths in the booths which are actually fitted sheets for a crib with a smooth glass panel over it, this is very cute and original, I love it.
Love the theme.
Lighting is great.
Helpful, kind and energetic staff but they could use a few pointers.
Eggs were hot and delicious.
Fresh FRESH fruit! But overpriced by double.
Cons: the booths are just horrendus, please invest in cushioning and structure that will hold.
My mom ordered medium-​rare steak and eggs, and it came out SUPER rare! [They fixed it with no fuss though.]
The playlist needs to be edited to exclude the fast-​jumpy eat-​your-​food-​and-​scram music and include more relaxing tunes, as any diner should have.
The ceiling shape makes everything echo!
FLIES!!! Ew gross please do something about this!
No hot apple cider or even apple juice! It’s freaking Washington, get it together, people.
Had to ask for steak sauce with the steak and eggs, pretty obvious that someone would want it.
The utensils were randomly thrown in the middle of the table instead of placed at the sides, and my mom received no spoon for her coffee.

Decent place. Shared a Kodiak Club with my boyfriend. Only one server at midnight. Ordered a chocolate chip cookie and a GIGANTIC slice of chocolate peanut butter cake. So big I could barley close the box.

I went back again, and I was not disappointed!
I felt like the owners helped us, as it was two very attentive guys in a busy monday night football bar atmosphere. They did a great job making sure everyone had drinks in a timely manner, and they were STRONG.
Still didn’t order food, but those two delivered on the divey drinks! The service was great and they went out of their way to make sure every guest had what they needed. I’ll make sure I update my friends who have loved Yen Wor in the past, and I will definitely, definitely be back!

This place is TERRIBLE. The food, the décor, the ants… Did they even try with this place?
Seriously. Where do they order from? I don’t even think the cheapest Sysco options are this terrible. A bit of a confused look was offered when asked if the «veggie burger» was beef style or garden style. She should have said neither — a peach colored dharma-​initiative patty perhaps! Are they serving generic steak fries barely cooked? The pickles slices were so thin and watery they were translucent.
I REALLY wish we had noticed the broken window with tape on it and the ants crawling — to get out of this place?! before we ordered and *tried* to eat our meals. My wife’s dish of eggs and hashbrowns didn’t look quite as bad although she barely touched any of it after it was discovered that it was completely tasteless. The hashbrowns were of fairly terrible quality as well.
I get why this place is open 24 hours and attached to a bar — the only time they could pass of their offerings as food is when people are drunk. Seriously — this place is the worst. We would hit up fast food before going here again and we haven’t done fast food in a decade or so…

From the inside it still looks like the old Yen Wor/​China First, which was cool. The breakfast food was okay. The real hook is that it’s 24 hours and the bar next door (which has long been the appeal for that space). I ordered a breakfast with a veggie patty and got a Boca burger instead of breakfast sausage which was weird.
This is still super new, so I’m betting that once they get into the swing of things, it’ll improve by quite a bit.

I don’t have enough good things to say about this place. I have been to the North Star Diner for food 3 times and the Shanghai Room many more. I love that it feels comfortable, laid back, not pretentious and the staff are great. The owners are seriously lovely people and you can really feel that permeate through the whole operation. What I love about the place:
North Star Diner:
— Open 24 hours!!!
— The build your own breakfast burrito is so damn good. I am a connoisseur of breakfast burritos and this is my very favorite. It’s huge, filled with fresh ingredients, not oily at all and packed with flavor.
— The P.A.T. Benedict, the house made pesto hollandaise is soooo good
— The pastries: I have eaten the savory pastry (my fav), a cinnamon roll and chocolate cookie, all delicious.
— I have had nothing but really great service here and reasonable wait times.
The Shanghai Room:
— Atmosphere: simply everything I love about a good dive bar, very low lights, vinyl comfy seats, a huge bar and people from all walks of life.
— Karaōke every night! Best people watching and great selection of songs.
— Drinks: I love that I can get a delicious craft cocktail or a pint of beer. Love the Mont Blanc!
Looking forward to watching some Seahawks games on their big screen this fall!

We decided to give it another shot. Surely a month is enough time to get things in order.
We walked in and my partner jokingly says, «Let’s sit at the counter, we can’t get ignored there!»
Well…we did (sit at the counter AND get ignored). The server who handed us menus was nice, but distracted (it was busy, understandable). We ordered promptly and asked for coffee and water.
Water came quickly, but we waited a half hour for coffee (drip, and literally four feet in front of us seated at the counter). Placated by coffee, we continued to wait, noticing other counter seated folks getting food. Then eating food. Then finishing it.
At approximately one hour after ordering, the server asks us what we’re still waiting for. Well… our food. We remind her of our order, and she disappears into the kitchen.
We wait another five minutes without getting an update on our order, and catch her eye telling her we’ve decided to leave.
She apologized, which was nice, but really… we want to like this place. And we just can’t. We’re twice burned.

I was excited to try this place.
When we came around dinner time, it was pretty empty. The food was tasty – traditional diner fare – much like the stuff you could get at any diner, anywhere though. The french toast was a little dry, and the duxelles on my grilled cheese was a little bland. The prices seemed way too high for the food, though. They are asking for Skillet-​level prices for Denny’s-type food – the flavors and execution just don’t warrant the cost. Also, it was a little disappointing there is still no dinner menu and the benedict dishes aren’t served after 2:30. I probably won’t go back unless they adjust either the food or the prices – they are next door to Munch café, and that is still going to be my go-​to spot when I’m in the area. I wish them the best though!
They do have a ton of parking, which is super convenient, but when we went some hobos were blocking the sidewalk between the lot and the restaurant and asking everybody who passed for money. So they may have to deal with that.

At last, and just in time for what feels like the long-​awaited Greenwood revival. We’ve needed a 24-hour-joint-that-is-not-Beth’s for a long time; fortunately, this friendly spot is much more than just a placeholder. I’ll leave the reviews of the Shanghai Room to others, though I have indeed tested the entire non-​rum section of the specialty cocktails menu (the things I do for you, Unilocal!) and can recommend the bar’s work with confidence. Try the Malt Blanc… carefully. Very sneaky, that one.
So, the restaurant. First off, if the Unilocalers whining about dishware issues would kindly go back to California or wherever, that’ll leave more room for the rest of us. (The bar-​only crowd whining that it’s not the former Yen Wor gin joint can kindly go back to the Baranof, or possibly jail.) Burgers, pulled pork, omelets (mmm Cassiopeia), INSANELY GREAT PANCAKES, and various other breakfast items all excellent; I don’t love their chili, but I get what they’re going for; ditto the coffee, which is a perfectly nice roast that isn’t precisely the way I’d do it myself. The waitstaff is friendly, and service has been fast and well-​executed after a few glitches in the first week or two. Overall, a promising start, and I am pleased that the rest of the neighborhood seems to be catching on. Next stop: The dinner menu!

This place has tons of parking! We went here because we couldn’t find parking to go where we had intended, so congrats on winning our business due to parking convenience lol.
The good:
— Parking (see above)
— Vanilla Milkshake — very tasty! Nothing out of the ordinary.
— Tuna Melt — my husband had this and said it was very good.
The bad:
— The caesar salad was terrible. First off, the salad was big and served on a small plate. Whenever I stuck my fork in, the salad would pour off of the plate onto the table! Second, the dressing was horrible. It seemed like it was trying to be a lighter caesar, but a lot of the lettuce barely had any dressing on it (a problem which I couldn’t remedy because I wasn’t able to toss the salad since the plate was too small) and the dressing which was on it didn’t taste nearly as good as most caesar salads.
— The service was meh. I got served my caesar salad and my waitress didn’t come by ever. Someone else came and took the salad away about 20 minutes later, and then of course the waitress was surprised when I didn’t seem overly happy when she dropped off the check, even though she hadn’t come by during the entire 20 minutes while I sat with a salad I wasn’t eating.
Overall — OK.

NOTE: I don’t drink and I don’t like karaōke — my review is strictly for the North Star Diner and *NOT* the Shanghai Room. I have no opinion on the bar itself.
I don’t Unilocal a lot. Most of the time, I’m a pretty happy camper about my experiences, and even if I’m not, I won’t bother logging in to discuss it. Something about Unilocal just seems passive-​aggressive, and that’s not my style. Most of the time, restaurants are solid enough unless I get treated poorly like at a certain Capitol Hill all-​night diner that I despise. However, this is a special case — reading the four reviews that have been posted before me (as of this writing), I didn’t think it was prudent to allow so much sunshine while there are clearly clouds on the horizon.
It’s pretty clear that they worked hard to get the place open, and I was pretty ecstatic to have an all-​night eatery in the neighborhood. With all of the work being done, I assumed that the inside of the restaurant would be… nicer? cooler? I’m not sure what the word is, here — basically, it feels unwelcoming. I found that it had more in common with a doctor’s waiting room than some of the other diners around town. Even IHOP’s white walls have at least some art hanging on them.
Sure, they kept some of the décor of the China Jade and Yen Wor before it, but if you never managed a meal at either iteration, there was no amount of décor that was going to cover up the abomination those establishments referred to as «food». White walls… white walls…
Some of the other things that struck me:
1.) Wait staff don’t know the menu. During both of my visits, the servers returned to my table after a few minutes to have me point out what it was I wanted to eat. Okay, this logistical error is resolved with time — staff will get to know everything at some point, so it’s really not that big a deal. The servers with whom I’ve spoken have all been super nice, hard-​working people.
2.) The karaōke bar has got its share of colorful characters — it always has. If you’ve lived in Greenwood for any length of time — and I’ve been there for fifteen years — you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
It’s a little disturbing when one of the patrons, after clearly having had a few, walks into the diner from the bar, and up to my table as I’m sitting and having a coffee, then starts asking me how the food is, breathing on me with an old drunk’s boozy breath, curious about what I’ve ordered and how drunk I am. Not being shy, I politely but openly and sternly asked him to leave me the hell alone.
«Okay, bro, cool. Can I have a fist bump?»
«No, I don’t do that — be on your way.»
3.) The purchased the Yen Wor, lock, stock, and barrel. Another reviewer mentioned the plates — yes, they’re serving on the same plates that Yen Wor used. A plate is a plate is a plate, but it was a funny thing to see when I got my first order.
FOOD:
My first order was steak and eggs, which is a staple of my late-​night diner habits. For $ 15.99, you get a 6 oz. steak, hash browns, and three eggs any way you want ‘em. When my plate arrived at my table, I expected a small piece of meat (6 oz. is nothing), but my eggs were a little soft (scrambled), and there weren’t a whole lot of hash browns. Hash browns are generally the throw-​away aspect, here, because Beth’s pretty much gives them away.
A t-​bone steak and eggs plate at Shari’s in Shoreline is $ 16.99, but it’s a t-​bone twice the size, and you get toast.
Coffee was negligible. It’s better than 7 – 11 drip, about on par with the 5 Point, but not near the quality of 13 Coins.
My second order two nights later was a stack of pancakes with a side of «ham steak», each served again on the chinese plates (lol). The pancakes were pretty small (the plates are small), with a little blackening around the edges (same for the «ham steak»).
The pancakes were underdone. I didn’t get too bothered because the pancakes seemed inexpensive at $ 5.99 (ham steak for an additional $ 3.00), but an underdone pancake inside coupled with burned pancake outside… not really a good deal at any price.
One opinion is that they’re new, and seemingly cash-​poor, so they opened up with what they had and are making the best of limited resources. Another opinion is… do you really want to stumble out the gate instead of putting your best foot forward?
I believe at least two of the three individuals who own the place were present during each of my visits. They seem like nice people, and were clearly working their tails off to make things as good as they could. I’m not opposed to returning in two months to see how well they’ve fared.
I really want to give them an extra star, and I truly want to help them out by giving them a solid review instead of preventing a really cool thing from taking off… but I’d be lying to myself if I did that, and my disappointment level is pretty high.
I’ll see you again in a couple of months, North Star, but for right now, you’re asking me to pay 13 Coins prices for Lost Lake quality.

Ever since the day a piece of our hearts sank into oblivion (R.I.P Yen Wor), we have been somewhat patiently waiting for the completely renovated, wholly reinvented, grand opening of North Star. In so many words, it was worth the wait. The new bar is gorgeous, the new menu is a glorified, Seattle version of the 24 hour diner, and even the bathrooms have been brought into the 21^st century. It’s only been one day so this review will inevitably be updated, but I’m happy to report that the corner of 87^th and Greenwood is back (sorry #theHouse) and the hometown crew is excited for a new dawn in late night eating and raucous singing all nights of the week.