Wagamama

Service ok. Food is dry, nothing is fresh, spring onion tastes and looks like winter, tiny and shrinked shrimps, £8. The ramen were not even Ramen but bad noodles. Anyway it's not japanese food, nor chinese, or vietnamese, it's "asian food"....

I'd better make myself a sandwich at home.

Mike F (DI User), 17/11/11

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Been going to Wagamama for years in London, and loved it. Was really excited when it opened in Oxford.
Unfortunately very disappointed. The salad I ordered was poor, and badly put together (I mean how wrong can you go with a salad?), and far too oily. The fresh fruit juices, one was good, the other was awful.

The service was great though. Just the food sucked, and I hated paying for the rubbish we had no choice but to eat!

UnayZa (DI User), 04/02/10

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I had a meal at Wagamama with my friends and we were all very disappointed.

The staff is friendly and attentive but the food is tasteless and miserly. I had the chicken mandarin salad which consisted of bean sprouts, 3 bits of mandarin, a few wilted leaves and tiny slices of boiled industrial chicken. My friends had a noodle dish - ramen - but there were more noodles and chili water than anything else.

The decor and atmosphere is attractive if you like clean communal eating and nice wooden Asian crockery but the cooking is poor and ingredients cheap. I felt starving as I left the restaurant and my fiends stuffed with nothing better than noodles!

A chain of this magnitude should do better.

EM (Unverified), 15/11/08

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We came here earlier in the week and had a great meal. Yes it is a chain restaurant but our food was tasty and well cooked, and service was really friendly. It is fast food but worth a visit if you are very hungry and in a rush. We had the deep tiger fried prawns and duck dumplings to begin - the duck in particular was delicious. Then we had a chicken noodle dish and the chicken katsu curry - cheap, generous portions and tasty. We were not expecting mind blowing food but this place is a welcome addition to the other tired noodle joints in Oxford. Recommended for good value and prompt service.

ALS (Unverified), 15/08/08

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Wagamama seems to be open again now. A nice place to eat and I'm surprised there aren't more positive comments here. Have had very pleasant food here - a fabulous coconut / vegetable / noodle soupy thing was especially good.

If you ask for green tea, it's free (always nice) and generally I'd say this is a good place to go for an informal, healthy, tasty, relatively cheap meal. Definitely my preferred noodle bar over other Oxford choices...

beeswing (Unverified), 27/07/08

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Having eaten here twice now, I have been disappointed twice. The first time, the food was okay - we both went for noodley-soup-type dishes, and whilst the portions were substantial the food wasn't particularly exciting and lacked flavour. The side dish, duck gyoza, only arrived after we told the staff it was missing. This was taken off the bill.

The second time, my companion ordered a king prawn salad, only to be told that it hadn't been available for some time and they hadn't taken it off the menu as they'd just had them reprinted. He had the mandarin chicken salad instead, which was tired, and looking decidedly wilted - the mange tout peas in it were kind of yellow round the edges. We complained, and they brought another one out which was basically just as tired as the first one. My salmon teriyaki was underwhelming - a large heap of beansprouts and noodles with very little greenery (I found about 5 bits of pak choi) and a piece of salmon balanced on top. It was pretty bland and lacked interesting ingredients. For the price and the menu description, I expected something better.

I feel that Wagamama in Oxford is coasting on its chain-restaurant reputation and is not delivering as it should be.

Anna B (Unverified), 12/03/08

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I have enquired in the past as to why the menu is quite so limited (notably lacking Chilli Chicken Men) and whether off-menu requests can be accommodated. The reason, apparently is that the kitchen size restricts them to teppan fried dishes; no woks in the kitchen... In essence, attentive and cheery service, but characterless, inauthentic venue, bland ramen and gyoza not a patch on certain other places.

KT (DI User), 07/03/08

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Wagamama is far better than some of the smaller independently owned noodle bars in Oxford, but be prepared to pay for it.

I have been to a couple of other branches of this popular chain and having now been to the new one that's been crammed into the old City Tavern site in Market Street, I have to say there are no subtle differences at all in the food. I guess this is a good thing for a chain. I had originally tried to visit this place with friends for a meal a couple of weeks earlier but was put off by the crowds waiting on the street for a table so we dined elsewhere. This time however I was alone having done some shopping in the centre on a weekday lunch-time and had no trouble getting seated though admittedly they put me on a bench (suitable for the sad lone diner) facing the front window so everyone passing could stare in at me wolfing down my lunch!

I had the chilli chicken ramen which, whilst costing around £8.50, tasted very fresh with good quality chicken, crunchy chinese veg and reasonable noodles. The broth was also good but I would have liked it to be a bit spicier; then again I guess most others would find it spicy enough already. I accompanied this with some edamame which were tasty enough (can these be done badly?) but whilst the choice of salt or chilli and garlic on top seemed good (I plumped for the latter), it made no discernible difference to the taste.

The star of the show though, just ahead of the ramen, was my drink. I would normally default towards a beer in the evening but this time I had the apple and lime juice. This was fantastically tasty with the apple being dominant but with spiky tangs of lime poking through. Very refreshing and very more-ish. Bill was approx £15.

Overall, very nice but not worth waiting in the street for! Also, I notice on the official Wagamama website that some of the standard dishes are not available at the Oxford restaurant - I don't know if this is due to a size of kitchen issue or what, but bear in mind if you are a veteran.

Joe B (Unverified), 06/03/08

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We arrived a little after 6 on a Friday evening, as did many others. My previous experience of Wagamama was in London, somewhere like Notting Hill, and this branch of the chain, while much smaller, was otherwise, as you might expect, very similar. You sit along long rows of tables, your distance from your neighbours dictated by how busy it is, and confirmation of your order is written on your place mat, which doubles as the dessert menu.

The main menu is divided into starters, soup noodles, fried noodles and rice dishes, five to ten of each, about 20% vegetarian, nothing I noticed over £10.

For starters we had yasai gyoza (£4.50), 5 wobbly vegetarian dumplings, and edamame, (£3.50) soya beans in their pods. The dumplings were nice-ish but unremarkable, but the edamame were noticeably fresh and firm.

Our mains were salmon teriyaki soba (£9.95), a fried noodle dish, and ebi raisukaree (£9.50), a rice curry with prawns. The former was nicer, subtly but not weakly flavoured, with a generous portion of fish. The curry was beautifully presented, and had all the right components but was just a wee bit bland.

We just had room to share a chocolate fudge cake with wasabi (£4.50). This was really good, moist and rich and steadily decadent. We did wonder, spice fiends that we are, if the wasabi might have been notched up a little higher than the hint of aftertaste that it offered.

With a Tiger beer, and some tap water, the total cost was £37, and we were both agreeably stuffed. Service was quick, friendly and attentive.

In summary, it's a nice dependable eatery, which sticks to a winning formula. Don't expect to be either overwhelmed or disappointed.

Su Jordan (DI Staff), 07/01/08

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