Asagao
324 Pitt St
Sydney, NSW 2000
$$$–

So I was walking past Asagao after work and decided to pop in and check it out, since I love the MET Centre one, despite being warned about this Pitt St branch. It’s completely different – it’s basically just a standard sushi-train restaurant. The interior’s lovely though – bright and cheery and it wasn’t too crowded since I was there early. Unfortunately, that also means that the sushi had been going round and round and round on the sushi train, so who knows how old/fresh it was…? But I didn’t get a stomach-ache afterwards, fortunately, so it couldn’t have been too bad. Haha!

The staff weren’t terribly attentive so fortunately it was a sushi train, so I could help myself to the array of dishes parading past. Not a huge selection, probably around 10 different choices? But I was keen to eat light since I had a late/heavy lunch, so it suited me just fine. Had a mere 3 dishes – all sushi. The Spicy Seafood was my favourite – just spicy enough for a bit of a kick, and lots of prawns adorned on top of the rice. 2nd favourite was the Corn & Crabstick – plump succulent bits of corn, shredded crabstick and cucumber. Refreshing and delicious! And the least favourite was Salmon & Avocado – which in retrospect was my fault for ordering, I mean, how exciting can that be? It wasn’t, just like any other standard salmon/avocado roll. Nice but not particularly exciting.

Asagao

Spicy Seafood

Corn & Crabstick

Salmon & Avocado

Toraya Japanese Restaurant
Shop 212, Mandarin Shopping Centre
Chatswood, NSW 2067
$$$–

Watched Spiderman 3 (finally!) with Chris last night and since we were in Chatswood, decided to try out Toraya again.. a leeeetle bit hesitant at first ‘cos of the ridiculous waiting time I’d experienced the last time. But I mean, I can’t be that unlucky twice, right? WRONG!! They must really dislike my face or something, because they did it to us AGAIN 😉

So we got seated lightning quick, despite there being a queue and the restaurant being packed as usual. “Hrmmm!! Onto a good start here.” I thought. Buuuuuttt.. they forgot to give us menus. We were so busy chatting that we didn’t notice until 10 mins later when I got antsy. Called them over and they produced the menus promptly. Okay, situation resolved. But after taking our order, Chris’ came out around 15 mins later (fairly reasonable).. and mine? NOPE!! Trying not to get annoyed, I tried to calmly ask them where my meal was. 30 mins after first ordering, it finally came. Arghhh!! So yes, I think they just don’t like the look of me.

But food-wise, their food really is great. Pricey though, so you’d expect it to be. The Salmon Teriyaki had big chunks of salmon, all meltingly soft and beautifully flavoured. It comes with salad, potato salad, rice and soup.. enough to fill anyone. I had the Grilled Mackerel – and it came a LOT bigger than I thought, basically enough to share between two people. It was mega! When the waitress (finally) appeared with the platter, I was like “Errrmmmm! HOW am I going to finish this…” But I did, haha. It was DIVINE – the flesh was just firm enough with the most brilliant, slightly salty taste. Absolutely perfect with a squeeze of fresh lemon and eaten with plain white rice. It’s not often you find good Mackerel done well in Australia, so I was suitably impressed.

Complimentary seaweed appetiser

Top-view

Ramune, Japanese lemonade

Salmon Teriyaki with salad, potato salad, rice and soup

Grilled Mackerel

Scaaary closeup!

And, randomly, a sweet photo of Misty. Her favourite past-time (after tiring herself out running all over the place) is putting a paw on my leg when I’m sitting on the couch, so I pick her up. Then, she climbs onto my lap, settles herself down, and takes a snooze. SO CUTE!!!