Excessive Opinions

Eating at Wagamuma’s is an odd experience. It’s an London based organisation which in all attempts completely fails to shrug this fact off. Serving food which utilises Japanese cuisine in a heavily altered way so that our western bodies can handle it, this is definitely a weird place.

Sitting down in this English establishment, being served Americanised foods prepared by part time cooking students we’re presented with chopsticks. Looking around, our waiters are all “hipster” university dropouts who think they’re fully justified to have chosen an art degree in the first place; they believe that sushi actually means “raw fish” and proclaim their love mother earth while they smoke it. These rapists of Asian culture all assume that everyone going to what they think is an actual Japanese “restaurant” will obviously know how to use chopsticks. Asking for a familiar utensil is useless in this place.

The notion that despite eating food which is actually available in every supermarket across Britain, you’re suddenly obliged to use chopsticks is something this company wishes to shove down your throats. Something which annoys me.

I look outside and I don’t’ see the beautiful landscape commonplace when picturing the strange faraway culture this food is claiming to originate from. No, I see five chavs hanging outside a Subway, about 6 Starbucks and a Primark.

Americanised food prepared by subpar chefs, served to me by English hipster students in knee high socks, sitting in a modern style “restaurant.” My elbows sharing space with a graphic designer talking to his soon-to-be-client on my right and to my left someone of Chinese background who hasn’t ever left England trying to show off to his girlfriend that he is all orient and cool by choosing this place to host his date. I don’t quite feel like by using a fork I’m really breaking the atmosphere.

I eat my food and I drink my imported beer. I pay about twice what a Chinese takeout would cost, about twelve times what it would cost to make this food at home and probably actually about equal to the cost of flying over to Japan would be on Ryanair or Easyjet. And I leave the restaurant still hungry.