Wagamama...

Is a great, big con. I can't understand why so many people are taken in... To be fair, I've only been there twice, but that was enough for me to dislike the chain. They pride themselves on their noodle soups so the first time I visited Wagamama (Covent Garden branch) I chose the kare lomen, which they describe as 'a spicy soup made from lemongrass, coconut milk, shrimp paste, chillies, fresh ginger and galangal, served with ramen noodles and garnished with grilled prawns, beansprouts, cucumber, lime and fresh coriander'.

Sounds lovely, don't you think? It looked ok (the similar chicken kare lomen can be seen to the left) and was garnished with a few sprigs of fresh coriander and a wedge of lime. I delved in with my chopsticks but was soon disappointed. There were three butterflied prawns, decidedly overcooked, in a muddy coloured bowl of thin soup which contained a large handful of beansprouts, shredded cucumber and noodles. The soup tasted nice, I could pick out the lemongrass and chilli flavours, but that was about it. Beansprouts and cucumber (and noodles) have to be the most boring, tasteless and cheap fillers for any meal, and at £8.50 a bowl, with 3 prawns and not much else - the sum of the ingredients must have been just a few pence - it's horribly overpriced. And then I must account for the appalling, rude service, the way they rush you to order, the very expensive drinks and how they allow for their erratic service by stating they won't bring your table's meals together (or even within the same half an hour, as we found) as they 'want to ensure the freshness of your food'.

My second visit was just as bad. As I was aware that the prawn dishes arrived with very few of their main ingredient, I chose chicken, and was disappointed again. I pointedly chose a different noodle soup - the chicken itame - noodle soups are their 'signiture dishes'. Yet again, the bowl was stuffed full of beansprouts and not much else. However, a friend did choose some deep-fried duck dumplings (duck gyoza) which were tasty and contained a good amount of duck, particularly for the price... but I can get nicer duck in my local vietnamese.

Wagamama is inexplicably popular - it is not good value, the food is shoddy and it has rude service, yet people still continue to rave about it. All I can think of is that it must have a great marketing team behind it and someone, somewhere must be rubbing their hands in glee over how much they are conning their customers.