Wagamama Visited 5/17/2016 3.5 Forks

Wagamama   Jubilee Place, 45 Bank Street, Canary Wharf E14 5NY, United Kingdom

Ahhh, Wagamama.  There are a few staple chain restaurants that will always work in a pinch if you need something and Wagamama is definitely on that list.  Unfortunately they don't have one in NYC (although I heard a rumor there is one coming soon) yet but I have had it in Sydney and London before and always knew that it was a solid go-to if you really couldn't think of any place else to go. It's like the Spice or Republic equivalent in NYC.  It's fast, relatively cheap Asian noodles of all varieties - ramen, udon, curry, donburi, with a bunch of Asian appetizers.  I generally don't love it when restaurants cobble things together and call it  "Pan Asian" but in a more of a casual setting, who cares? 

I had spotted a Wagamama when I was running around the shopping mall under Canary Wharf.  I was determined to eat there before I left London since I needed a decent place to have lunch and over my dead body was I going to Pret a Manager again (twice is more than enough).  I ran into Wagamama and told them that I need to be in and out in less than 45 mins to catch a plane and they were great about it.  The hostess whisked me to corner of a communal table and had the waiter come over in less than 5 minutes.  I got the chicken ginger udon (who doesn't love a good udon dish?!) and a ginger beer - apparently I was on a ginger kick.   The food came out quickly and it was as expected - nothing mind blowing or terribley unique but after all the really not-so great food I had been having in London, it really hit the spot. It was basically udon noodles stir fried with ginger chicken, egg, chilies, beansprouts, and red onion.  But it was such a comforting dish at that moment and I was so happy while I was eating it.  I finally was able to take-in the fact that I was in London for the first time since I had gotten there.   It was nice to see all the hustle and bustle of the workers coming in for lunch - the area is the financial district of town so there were lots of people milling around and I kind of felt like a local having lunch during work.  Sadly I had to bust a move to the airport but I was happy to have ended my trip on a pretty satisfying note and I can't wait for the first Wagamama to open in NYC.  Total bill:  14 GBP

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Rocket Canary Wharf Visited 5/16/2016 2 Forks

Rocket Canary Wharf   Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5RB, United Kingdom

Usually when I travel for work I get excited to try out some fun new restaurants in town that I ordinarily wouldn't get to try and put it on the corporate card.  Unfortunately this time, I was in London for such a short time and was visiting my new team that I let them pick a place.  To make things easy, we just went to a local restaurant across the street from the office.

The setting is lovely as they have a nice roof top with a view of the wharf.   Yelp categorized their food as "New American" and I guess it's 50% accurate - it's American with a British twist and I'm not saying that in a good way.  The menu was a random mish-mosh of things like lamb kofta, pizzas, surf and turf and of course fish and chips.  I started with the Thai Crab Cakes (7.5 GBP), which is hardly an American dish and settled on their "Famous" Rare Beef and Chip salad (18 GBP).  Please note this main dish was described as a salad - this will come into play later.

The crab cakes was definitely NOT up to my standards - it was mostly filler and not much of any real lump crab meat in it but to be fair it was described not as a MD crab cake but a make shift Thai version so I can't rag on them too much.  As for my entree - so remember how it was described as a salad?  Well I don't know how Brits categorize salads but this one was unlike any one I had seen before.   Granted it was described as having chips (aka fries) with it which I had assumed would be on the side of the salad but no, this had thick cut steak fries and thick cut medium well steak piled high on top of a teeny tiny bed of arugula and then drenched with a very heavy black bean dressing. It came with a side of mayo for the fries - how healthy.  I have no idea how this is considered a salad as it was possibly the most unhealthy thing I've ever seen.  If these were served individually (a steak with a side of salad and fries), it would have been a much better dish but put together and covered in what was essentially gravy was not doing it for me at all.  I ate most of the steak and some of fries but couldn't come close to finishing it.  I hate to say it but this meal totally re-enforced the stereotype of terrible British food.   It feels like their answer to everything is to throw "chips" on everything - good grief.

Luckily I was so jet lagged and tired that I didn't really care about dinner too much to be disappointed.  The culinary theme of this trip for me was to just eat so that I wouldn't pass out.  Total bill:  unknown since it was paid for by co-worker on corporate card

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Lokkanta Meze and Barbecue Visited 5/15/2016 4 Forks

Lokkanta Meze and Barbecue   31 Westbourne Grove, London W2 4UA, United Kingdom

I was in London for less than 48 hours for work but since I was there I wanted to squeeze in some social time and take advantage of my time there.  I hadn't seen my friend Ingrid in quite some time so it was quite lovely catching up with her while I was there.  I don't really have a great sense of London geography but apparently I was on one side of town and she was on another, so we met in a place in the middle at Notting Hill (yes, that Notting Hill) for a tasty Turkish meal. 

Despite trying to be open minded about different cultures, I find the food in London to be really quite bad - it's so shocking given how international and urban the city is but in all the years that I've been there, I have yet to find another city with less culinary appeal than London.  Luckily, Lokkanta stepped it up a notch.  Ingrid found it on TripAdvisor and while it's definitely nothing fancy (it could double as sharma take out place in NYC but it does have a few tables inside), the food is quite flavorful and good.   They had a nice variety of hummus, falafel dishes, and grilled meat plates.  I started with the soup of the day (lentil soup) and got the grilled lamb dish (12 GBP) for my main.  I was prepared for the lentil soup to be just ok but I was starving which is why I ordered it and it was actually quite delicious.  It had a tomato base which was surprising but brought some good acidity and flavor to it.  It almost seemed more like a tomato barely soup than lentil - in any case, it was simple but well balanced soup that was quite enjoyable.  The grilled plate had tender pieces of lamb grilled over the BBQ topped with a tomato based yogurt sauce and drizzled with butter.  (I'm sensing a trend with all the tomato bases here).  It was a fairly large portion and combined with the bread, it was quite filling.  The sauce had a bit of an Indian feel to it with the buttery tomato yogurt base but it was great to sop it all up with lots of warm pita bread and lamb.  My only complaint was there was too much sauce on the plate - the dish was practically swimming in it and no matter how much bread or lamb I used to soak it up, it was just all over the place.  

Despite it not being a real fancy sit-down place, it actually was the perfect set-up for us because it was super casual and they let us sit there for 2+ hours talking without really bothering us.  While I've always had a strong preference for ethnic food, my experience this time in London proves that if you really want to have any sort of digestible meal in England, stick with the Indian/Middle Eastern track as it'll have the most flavor of anything you'll have there.  Total bill: 15.75 GBP

Photo Credit:  Yelp