I had a fantastic night in Dublin a few weeks ago, spending my last night in the Irelands with my family eating good food and enjoying great entertainment. We were on South King Street in anticipation of seeing Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre (post on that to come in the near future), so my well-traveled sister recommended we eat dinner at an international noodle bar chain called Wagamama.
It has been my traveling experience that eating becomes quite a drag when you are with a large group (11 in ours! Gotta love big families!) Eating out is expensive and inconvenient and eating in is boring and inconvenient, but you have to eat somehow, and quite often. Miraculously, this place solved the inconveniences I’m used to when eating out with my large family.
After our taxi driver dropped us off on a side street and somehow gave us directions away from South King Street and everywhere we needed to be, we eventually (with the help of some locals) figured out how to get where we wanted to be, and we found ourselves at Wagamama, just across the street from Gaiety Theatre.
My mouth was watering upon my first look at the menu. This place was perfect for our large group. There is a good mix of vegan and meat dishes. There are plenty of different tastes to please everyone. And while the menu uses Japanese terms for a lot of the dishes, there is a glossary at the top so that you can actually figure out what it all means! I also love a menu that directly specifies whether or not a dish is vegetarian, it helps me take a lot less time to figure out what I want. The best part of this restaurant for my family was that it definitely pleased my younger siblings who more often than not prefer some sort of Chinese-inspired noodle or rice stir-fry- for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Irelands didn’t often have anything of that caliber to offer during the three weeks they were there. My mom had actually brought over a bunch of their favorite noodles with her so that they could make them on their own, which they did, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
After debating between the yasai chilli men, or a serving of the vegetable gyoza and wok fried greens from the appetizers, or the yasai yaki soba, the last on that list is what I ended up with (no mushrooms, no pickled ginger; I’m still sometimes picky). Immediately upon receiving it, I knew I made the right choice.
yasai yaki soba- teppan-fried wholewheat noodles with egg, beansprouts, peppers, white and spring onions, and garlic, garnished with fried shallots, sesame seeds, and coriander vinegar
Typically I find noodle dishes too bland for my taste, regardless of who makes them. Maybe that’s too much of a blanket statement, but it’s what I’ve found to be true more often than not. There was soy sauce on hand, and I intended to make use of it after I took a few bites, but I never ended up needing it. I can’t tell you how or why, but it was one of the best dishes I’ve eaten out in a while. There were so many flavors all through it, and I was definitely shoving as much as I could in my mouth at a time in an effort to finish it all before I got too full (it was quite the generous serving, and yes, I did finish it.) I’m curious about the coriander vinegar; I do not like vinegar in most dishes, and typically request it to be omitted from my food if I am eating out. The fact that it was in this dish somehow passed by me, and actually I didn’t even realize until writing this post that I ate that dish with the vinegar in it. Does coriander vinegar have some sort of a different taste? I don’t recall tasting anything remotely like the vinegar taste that I don’t enjoy.
My mom got the yasai katsu curry. Not up my alley when it comes to food and tastes, but she loved it and ate every last bit of her dish as well!
yasai katsu curry- sweet potato, aubergine, and butternut squash deep fried in panko breadcrumbs, served with a curry sauce and japanese style rice, garnished with dressed mixed leaves and red pickles
My two youngest brothers ordered off of the kids menu and they were not disappointed either. Here is my youngest brother, clearly enjoying his food (and his chopsticks- a utensil he uses -gasp- breakfast, lunch, and dinner, regardless of the food).
He even got to have apple juice with his kids meal. I tasted it, and it was no Motts or anything of the sort. It tasted like a fresh squeezed cider!
As we were in Dublin and it is part of the European Union, we paid in Euros. My dish was €10.95, which comes out to approximately $13.75. Given that price, and that my dish was one of the cheaper ones on the menu, this is not a place I’d frequent every week (I assume others may pass it off- I am frugal to a fault), but it was a great experience that I’d be up for again if circumstances allowed! So far as I can tell, the only Wagamamas in the States at the moment are in the Boston area. Why does Boston get all the love? I’m ready for this place to expand here! Worldwide, you can find Wagamama in such countries/cities as Belgium, Egypt, Kuwait, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and a lot more.
Have any of you ever eaten at Wagamama? Where was it? What was your experience?
Rebekah Rae 