The History of Korean Gardens

KoreanGardens Restaurant Victoria opened their doors on May 5th 1999. Locally owned and operated by Arnold Lim it became the first Korean restaurant in the history of Saanich, Victoria. Mr. Lim worked on the location and concept of the restaurant coming out of college and when the doors opened on May 5th 1999, he was only 20 years old.

As a teenager, Arnold was a sushi chef at the “Oak Bay Marina” restaurant and studied sushi under David Nakayama and Kozo Kawada at the famous ocean-side fine dining restaurant. He spent a year there before moving on and looking for the location that would eventually become KoreanGardens Restaurant. Mr. Lim had been making sushi for 5 years before opening his own restaurant and has now been in the restaurant business for over 10 years. Mr. Lim has worked all over the restaurant map from dishwashing and mopping floors at a “Husky” Gas station and family restaurant, to making sushi at the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant. Interestingly, before Koreangardens was Koreangardens, it was “John’s Casanova”, a popular Portuguese restaurant, and before that a very successful Portuguese restaurant called “Maria’s”. To this day Maria DeMedeiros and her husband Jose are the owners of the building and the very friendly landlords of Koreangardens restaurant.

After a healthy stint at the “Oak Bay Marina”, Arnold took the techniques passed down to him by Mr. Nakayama along with the Korean cooking skills of his mother and formed Koreangardens restaurant. The full service Korean and Japanese restaurant has been open for over 5 years now and hopes to be a fixture in the community for years to come. Year after year, the staff at the restaurant strive to provide the best possible food and service they can provide, and in the first year of eligibility, Koreangardens was voted “Best Korean Restaurant” by the Victoria News group as voted by the citizens of Victoria Canada. “We here are Koreangardens would like to thank the warm hospitality of the patrons of the restaurant for voting us #1 and look forward to serving you into 2005 and beyond.”

-Arnold Lim-