桃園(Towon) & Sushi-YA @ Chatswood

Today, we have both our lunch and dinner at Chatswood, lunch with Kim, and dinner with lovely Ying & Ke.

We had our lunch at 桃園(Towon) - A Chinese Restaurant which serves chinese food(of coz =_='') and also some korean food(heard that the owners are a couple where the husband is a Chinese and the wife is a Korean).



When we first entered the restaurant, we were quite surprised by the ambience and decoration inside the restaurant. At first we thought it was just another hawker-style restaurant, but after entering the restaurant, we started to worried about our wallet. kakaka~

The atmosphere was quiet, relaxing and classy. Waitress were mostly Korean, and the service was friendly and prompt. We were given the menu right after we were seated at a table near the window.

After browsing through the menu, we were relieved that the prices were indeed rather reasonable. Kim saw this Korean Shio-jiu in the menu, and recommended us to try it. So we ordered 1 bottle to share.

It tasted somehow like white wine, lighter aroma, with much stronger alcohol content. I would prefer if it is slightly more fruity. ^.^ Though me and beng shared one bottle of it(375ml), we started to feel a little drunk after just a couple of tiny glasses.

The chopsticks cover was printed with Korean words too, carrying the same meaning as the Chinese words, "Peach Garden".

This yellow-roundish thingy was the complementary apetizer, according to Kim it is a common apetizer in Korean meal, and it tasted something similiar to pickles, sweet & sour. The chilli sauce was for the spring-rolls that came as a side dish to what beng ordered.

This is what beng ordered, Mongolian Lamb + Spring Roll rice set. The lamb was perfectly flavoured, very tasty, though the portion of the rice was slightly too small to fill up beng's pops~


Kim & I ordered the same dish, the Jajangmyeon, the Korean version of Zhajiang Mian (炸酱面), the brown colour of the sauce is from the use of chunjang (a salty, black-colored paste made from roasted soybeans), rather than hoisin sauce. Jajangmyeon may also feature a variety of diced seafood rather than pork. It doesn't taste like the Chinese-style Zhajiang Mian I've tried before, and I was quite surprised when first noticed that there were only mixed veges in it (a disappointment for a meat-lover like me) ..haha!

Ya I know, it doesn't look good. haha~

However, it was indeed true to not judge a book by its cover leh, it actually tasted quite good. Not too salty, not too sweet, just nice.

After finished eating, we spent some time chit-chatting, chilling and enjoying ourselves on this pleasant afternoon...

We left the restaurant around 2pm, when Kim realized that his car parking period was going to expired soon. We parted ways at the train station, and move on to our activities for the rest of the day.

Beng and I spent the next few hours scrolling along the streets at Chatswood, sitting on the bench watching all kinds of people passing by, shopping for groceries, joking, laughing, and enjoying each other's company. ^.^

At dinner time, we met up with Ying & Ke, and we went together in Ke's car to this popular sushi restaurant called Sushi-YA. It was located at the corner of the shoplot beside a quiet neighbourhood. I read about its reviews from the Internet and was very excited to try out the food myself.

We were greeted attentively as we entered the restaurant, and we were lucky to secure ourselves a table for 6, which is quite spacious for the 4 of us, in this small but cosy, very busy restaurant.

As usual, we ordered hot ocha(green tea) , our must-have drink whenever we visit a Japanese Restaurant.

They have quite delicate tableware, with nice Japanese drawing painted on..

We ordered the Special Sashimi set, a generous platter of mixed fresh seafood sashimi!!! The presentation of this dish was simply awesome and mouth-watering~ ...and guess wat? The price was incredibly affordable! The slices of raw fishes were thick and juicy, not to mention the superb freshness, this is definitely our favourite dish and it is worth every cent of the money spent!

Next, we also ordered the Main Sushi set, consisting of 15 pcs of mixed sushi and roll, which were cleverly placed on a rectangular plate.

Besides raw dishes, we decided to try some of their cooked dishes as well. We selected the Chicken meatball which was highly recommended by Ying. It was a plate of 6 medium-sized meatballs, marinated and deep-fried in a very tasty special sauce. It was crispy on the outside, and soft in the inside...yummy~~

As Ying is a vegetarian now, she ordered the fried tofu + rice set. She was very generous to share the dish with us, though she had got very little to eat from all the meaty dishes we've ordered. This is a very nice dish as well, I wondered what is the sauce they used to marinate the tofu, it was very rich in flavour as compared to other tofu dishes I usually have.

These were the 4 dishes we ordered and shared. All the food were of very high standard and we were very satisfied with it. Though the restaurant was kinda crowded and busy, we felt grateful that we were given much privacy and sweet time slowly enjoying our meal, and we never at all encounter any negative experience as mentioned in some of the reviews we saw on Internet.

It was indeed a great experience we had at Sushi-YA, and we would like to thank Ying & Ke for such a nice dinner and quality time with you guys. We are excitedly looking forward to our next visit together, and we'll make sure this time it'll be on us.

What a great day we had today! *^_^*