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to be the recently announced launch of Wagamama’s first outlets in the
Boston area. 48
Sleek and minimalist design and an emphasis on brand are the features
of Wagamama that were fairly innovative in the early 1990s, and widely
used in the strategies of the posh kaitenzushi bars that emerged in London a
few years after the opening of the first noodle canteen. The concept has been
one of the most successful and fashionable restaurant chains in Britain during
the last decade, and the chain has been prized as the role model for the
fast-food sector. In 2002, for instance, Wagamama won the British Retailers
Retailer of the Year Award for Best Concept – a prestigious award voted for
by senior executives within the catering and leisure industry. The following
year it was awarded the Hamburg Foodservice Award for Achievements
in the Industry, an award that honours pioneering concepts or outstanding
personalities in professional catering. Zagat Survey announced Wagamama
the most popular London restaurant of 2006. 49
The secret of Wagamama’s successes lays in a combination of factors.
Trendy and exotic appeal and quick service certainly play a role, but above
all the healthy image of the food served and affordable prices are crucial.
As the food critic Nick Lander remarked, ‘Wagamama has converted thousands
of teenagers to the pleasures of eating out and to eating healthily. No
other restaurateur has created restaurants where so many will queue for so
long, have fun and leave wanting to return.’ 50 As well as a wide range of
noodle dishes, it serves other hallmarks of Japanese national cuisine (all of
them actually recent hybrids), such as gyōza dumplings, chāhan (fried rice)
and breaded cutlet in curry sauce on rice (katsu karē). Once Japanese icons of
modernity and empire, these dishes are now heavily adjusted to the taste preferences
of British consumers by, for example, spicing-up the curry sauce.
Wagamama does not claim to serve Japanese food, but the Japanese
names of the dishes are retained. There is a fair chance that an average
teenager in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham or Brighton is familiar with
terms such as rāmen, yakisoba and udon. Easy-on-the-pocket Wagamama is
already a phenomenon in Britain. It remains to be seen whether it will
conquer the us, where the global journey of Japanese cuisine began.
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