think Wagamama is a place which manages to deliver good quality food and provide a nice atmosphere. Wagamama focuses on asian style dishes including noodles, rice dishes, soups. Wagamama is actually a chain of restaurants. The birth of place of this chain is Bloomsbury, London. At the time of this writing, there is only one restaurant in Switzerland but I would not be surprised if they open a couple more restaurants in cities like Bern or Basel.
The restaurant has a minimalistic but not distant interior. The kitchen is open, so you get to see what the cooks are doing all the time. There are 135 seats inside and 40 outside. The outside sitting is very pleasant in summer time since it is right near a small river. There is also free wireless internet, you just need to ask for the credentials.
Most of the service staff is very friendly. The service in general is very good, the only time that was I really annoyed (after not getting any food for than 1 more hour) was due to the restaurant really being overcrowded.
The Wagamama menu is large enough. You have a good selection of starters/side dishes including:
- Gyoza which come filled with chicken, duck or prawn (3 or 5 pieces). My personal favorite is the one duck. Gyoza sauce is very nice and it is not very hot.
- Grilled skewers of chicken or meatballs. I've the tried meatballs, there is one version which comes with peanut sauce and another one with sweet yakitori. Both of them are very nice.
- Some typical asian stuff like edamame(soya beans), miso soup, salads.
For the main course you have different categories noodles, rice dishes, salads, noodles in soup. Here are the details for some of the categories:
- Noodles: The dishes are with either the soba or the udon (thicker white ones) noodles, there are versions with duck, chicken, tenderloin beef steak or vegetarian. The one with beef steak is my favorite, depending on the day the quality and the size of the beef can vary but in general it is good quality. Most of the dishes include onions/garlic, chillies, ginger, coriander (on top)!
- Rice: You can choose from the stir fried and the katsu curry versions. Stir fried versions are pretty similar to their noodle siblings, i.e. versions with prawns, chicken, beef meatballs. They are all ok but the other version namely katsu curry is the real interesting dish. There are three versions of katsu curry, one with fired chicken, one with grilled chicken and one called yasai katsu curry.
My favorite dish in Wagamama is the Chicken Katsu. The description of this dish is as follows: "chicken fillet deep-fried in panko breadcrumbs, served with a lightly spiced curry sauce and japanese-style rice garnished with leaves and red pickles". First of all, I have to mention that the chickens are always perfectly fried, the chicken meat stays as tender as it can and the extremely thick katsu curry sauce which covers part of the chicken and the rice is exremely delicious.
In the menu there also around 6-7 deserts to choose from including cakes server with ginger or wasabi sauces, ice cream/fruit combinations. I've tried almost all of them, none of them are bad but they are also not very good.
The drinks: On top of the typical sodas, you can choose from a variety of fresh made juices (apple+lime combination is my favorite), home made ice tea(very nice as well). There around 6 red and white wines to select from (which can also be ordered by glass) and asian export beers.
The prices are reasonable for Zurich, the starters go between 6-10 CHF, the main dishes between 20-35 CHF and the deserts are 6-10 CHF.
I think Wagamama offers good value for the money, I certaily recommend this place if you are into asian food.
Wagamama, Zürich Sihlporte
talstrasse 83 sihlporte 8001 zürich switzerland
tel: 043 888 64 54
email:sihlporte@wagamama.ch
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