Wagamama

High standard chain restaurant with good food for not much money at all. Service a bit meh, haven’t ever seen service staff smile even once but I don’t really have high expectations about chains.
Good for lunch and good for kids/​groups but not exactly the place for a date or business dinner.

It’s a Waga, so were ok there then. The good thing about this branch is that it is huge! It used to be a fire station and so avoids the slightly communal feel of the other branches. It still has the long tables so if you want you can earwig the conversation next door, but there are lots of tables for two and four persons also. The food is just as good as other branches so no worries really.

Wagamama is my guilty pleasure, I just can’t get enough of their tori kara age and teryaki chicken donburi. So when we were hunting around Hammersmith for somewhere to have dinner and grab some drinks before Jimmy Carr at the Apollo, this place jumped out at me.
As ever, our experience was excellent. We were welcomed in and quickly shown to our tables and as we’re Wagamama veterans, we knew what we wanted, ordered and it came within 10 minutes. Perf.
The food was, as ever, lovely. The tori kara age is delightful. I could have a bowl of just that itself. My donburi was huge and definitely left me feeling full, and Matt’s chicken katsu curry both smelled and looked absolutely amazing. But then we expect nothing less, we’ve never had a bad experience at any Wag restaurant.
The cocktail side of it is where it loses a star though. I don’t know what they were doing, whether they were trekking in each ingredient individually or what but they took AGES to arrive. Every time. We were ordering two at a time so we’d have something to drink while we waited the inordinately long amount of time for the next one. Insane.
Before we went to pay, the waiter also explained about this new app where you can link your order with your account online, split the bill with someone else and pay over your phone instead of waiting for someone to come over. He said if we did this, we’d get 10% off and a free starter so being tech fiends, we said sure. Within 30 seconds, we had our account set up, had paid and were out of the door. Awesome.
Quick, simple and delicious food with cocktails and added tech bonuses. We’ll be back for sure.

This building is absolutely beautiful, I didn’t mind the 10 minute wait if it it meant getting to just take in the atmosphere. The staff were very helpful and chatty, as well as being understanding when I couldn’t make my mind up about what dish to pick! I go to Wagamamas quite a bit and I’ve never had a bad dish. Their flavors work so well and the portion sizes are very generous. My favourite has to be Duck Gyoza to start (try these!!) and Yaki Soba. Happy belly :) plus they offer free green tea — what could be better?!

I have a multitude of food allergies which always makes me a little nervous when going out to eat a meal in a restaurant. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I went to Wagamama for lunch and found their huge dietary guide for allergy sufferers. Honestly, they have an entire folder, going through every meal on their menu stating whether it has gluten, dairy, egg, fish, nuts etc in. Then you flip the folder over and it states what meals can be modified to exclude certain allergens. Amazing! I couldn’t believe it. Not only that but the service was great, the meals were reasonably priced and the dishes are super full of flavour. Most of the dishes were quite spicy which some of our party wouldn’t handle, and the drinks I did feel were quite overpriced, as in the orange juice but overall I’m super impressed. The food allergy folder blew us all away so kudos to Wagamama, awesome effort. Now if they used free range chicken instead of caged chicken they’d get a massive stamp of approval!

This was a great find built in an old fire station in Hammersmith. Absolutely great Asian food (all ordered by the numbers on the menu). Beautiful interiors, knowledgeable staff who offered helpful information and best of all, food comes out as it is made so you get freshly made, hot food. Good for kids, good for groups and good for takeout.

We ate late on a Sunday afternoon, which may be why the restaurant was surprisingly quiet for a Wagamama. Service was plentiful, really attentive and friendly, and our meal was the quality you can expect in a Wagamama — if you’ve not eaten in one before, this usually means very tasty and a good portion size. My only quibble is that the yaki soba used to be excellent, with a choice of chicken, seafood, etc, but now there’s just an all-​in-​one chicken and shrimp yaki soba, and the chicken was a bit scarce! It’s still good, but I hope they change it back!

One of the newest wagas in London. You sit with strangers when busy and can expect well portioned, fast served food and friendly service. What sets this apart is the seperate bar area and outdoor secluded eating area at the back, oh and the fire station poles that are leftover from the original building. Nice and close to hammersmith tube.