Many years ago, while walking round Birmingham I noticed a Japanese restaurant, Wagamama’s – yes I know it’s a really well-known chain and there seems to be at least one in every city, but at that point I’d never noticed them before. One of my favourite things is reading menus outside restaurants, even if I don’t intend going in – it’s just interesting to see what is on offer!
Wagamama’s first opened in London in 1992; the name means something like ‘naughty child’ or ‘playful’ apparently and the idea of the place is based on modern Japanese ramen bars, and that style of eating – well, when I first saw that one in Birmingham, I had just been reading a blog here on WordPress about ramen and ramen bars so I was very interested!
It wasn’t until I was spending the day with my daughter in Belfast that I first went into a Wagamama’s – there are now well over a hundred restaurants now, so I had seen several of them in my travels, but this was the first I went into. We were greeted by a friendly lad whose name badge told us he was Barney; as we hadn’t been there before he explained how the restaurant worked. There are no discrete tables, just long tables with benches which can seat lots of people. The waiters take your order, write it on your paper table mat and message it via PDA to the chef (PDA – personal digital assistant); the chef starts cooking and your food arrives when its ready, not altogether for all the people in the party. This means your food is always freshly cooked and hasn’t been waiting around for the rest of the order.
It took us a long time to work through the menu, but I decided to have ramen as it was the first thing which had attracted me to the place way back in Birmingham. My daughter chose katsu curry… and since then I don’t know how many bowls of ramen anc chicken katsu curries we’ve had together… it’s our little tradition!
Chicken katsu curry… my featured image is of my seafood ramen…. mmmm, I could eat some right now!!
Lois Elsden 