Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Orient Express, Crown

Orient Express is a Sushi Train restaurant located in the Crown Casino, Southbank. They are the very first in to have the double decker sushi train which serves cold and hot dishes. It is indeed a unique concept that is new and fresh.

It is unfortunately not easily noticeable because it is located at a corner on the upper level food court where KFC and McDonalds are. I wouldn't have discovered this place if it is not for the advertisements.



The setting of the restaurant is what you will typically find in a sushi train Japanese restaurant, with the bar seating. Only thing different is the double decker sushi belt, the top being the hot dishes and the bottom for cold dishes. They actually have radiant heaters on the hot sushi belt to keep the dishes warm. It feels really hot if you put your hands into the tube. The sushi belt is like a subway tube that can be opened and closed.



Other than the dishes on the sushi train, there are also about 50 hot dishes that can also be ordered from a list if they are not available on the sushi train. I'm not sure if it's because they are new, but the list of dishes was just a list, it wasn't a proper menu. We had the list on our table for a moment before it was taken away by the waitress to the other customers.

It would have been really helpful if they had a proper menu on every couple of seats so people could just order straight away and anytime. Also, the list of dishes only had the names and prices on it, there were no pictures or descriptions on them which we found rather difficult to figure out what the dishes were. A thumbnail sized photo of every dish they have would be really great to help provide a picture of what we are about to order and eat!


Ebi Sushi


Ebi Tempura Sushi Roll


Agedashi Tofu


Crab Stick Tempura


Salt and Pepper Calamari


I have no idea what is this dish called. It looked good so we just took it off the sushi train. The outer layer is crispy fried rice noodles with cheese and pine nuts as a filling. It has a sourish taste to it which was very odd and not to my liking at all.


Chocolate Mousse

Overall, the food here were not as special or good as I thought it would be. The photos and advertisements looked promising but we were quite disappointed.

Orient Express serves only small dishes and sushi. So if you are going with a group of friends and not everyone fancies sushi, this is not the right place to go to because they do not serve bento boxes or set meals.

My Ratings;

-Environment: 3/4
-Food: 2/4
-Price: 1/4
-Service: 3/4

Orient Express:
8 Whiteman Street,
Southbank, Melbourne, VIC 3006

03 9645 9959


Orient Express on Urbanspoon

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