Wagamama

Harvard Square, Cambridge,MA
Location

David and I were excited to hear that a London based Japanese noodle house, Wagamama opened in Harvard Sq. The concept, their website states, is modeled on popular ramen shops in Japan. I have not been to Japan, so I am not sure if their food is indeed, Japanese style. However, they certainly offer a variety of dishes with several types of noodles or rice to choose from. Just remember: everything is made fresh to order, meaning things come out as they are ready— not all at once. The servers tend to reiterate this point, which I suppose helps keep the tips coming in.

We have dined at this noodle house twice. On our first visit, we tried a few different dishes. As an appetizer, we tried the steamed Edamame sprinkled with a chili garlic salt, which makes it a little savory than a typical edamame dish. We also tried the Yasai Gyoza— they tasted like how most veggie dumplings taste, but without tofu. For entrées, we started with the Yasai Itame, this dish reminded me of a Thai style soup because it is coconut based and served with lime— spicy and tasty! Next, we had the Yasai Chili Men, it is described as, "stir-fried courgettes, white and mushrooms, mangetout, green and red peppers and fried tofu in a sauce made from chillies, ginger, garlic, onion, tomatoes, lemongrass and sweet red peppers, served with whole wheat noodles." The only thing that is puzzling to me is why they do not mention that it has a char-grilled flavor, when that seemed to be the predominant flavor of the dish. The rest of the described dish had very little taste.

On our second visit, we tried the Yasai Katsu Curry and the Yasai Yaki Soba. The Yasai Katsu Curry is deep-fried eggplant and butternut squash coated with panko bread crumbs, served with white rice and curry sauce— the curry sauce was great, but we would have liked a little more of it! Overall, it was delicious! The Yasai Yaki Soba dish was tasty, but needed chili oil and spices to complete it. The dish lists butternut squash as one of the main ingredients, but sadly there were only tiny shreds of squash that were undercooked and barely noticeable— except for the undesirable texture. The egg in the dish was not hearty enough to make this a complete vegetarian meal.

For dessert, we tried the citrus lime mousse. It was pretty good, but paled in comparison to the baked stem ginger cheesecake. I have never tried ginger cheesecake before— unique and delicious. Should you want to have some drinks with your meal, I recommend the Cono Sur Sauvignon Blanc, a Chilean light, crisp white wine — you can order a 6 oz pour for $6 or an 8 oz pour for $7, an unusually reasonable price for a decent glass of wine. They also serve different types and sizes of beer.

I am glad that they have dishes with whole wheat noodles but my biggest complaint— you cannot order tofu on the side or in addition to any meal! To sum up— decent Asian style food at a reasonable price, but I am not entirely sold on it. I might prefer to head over to the Porter Exchange Mall instead.