Tipped

Sincerest admiration & condolences

May 27, 2009

You all know Wagamama--lean modern decor, fast pan-Asian food, inevitably noisy--so I'm not actually reviewing this particular one. What I'm doing is writing an encomium to the staff.
Wandering through London with out of town friends on Saturday, we met a man by the Tate Modern. We got to talking, and talking, and talked some more. We decided to go for dinner together, and chose this Wagamama because the peoplewatching might be better. Directly after ordering, to (literally) illustrate a discussion on the values of spontaneity and playfulness, our exciting new acquaintance flipped his placemat over, and started drawing on it with condiments and chopsticks. Turns out he's not a bad artist--his chili oil, soy sauce, and toasted sesame seed lily was surprisingly vivid. Inspired, one of my friends followed suit, producing a big Rorschach blot.
And we continued talking.
Within 5 minutes, the staff insisted on replacing the placemats, and were entirely polite about cleaning up after these 30somethings, laying the table again and tracking down more napkins...despite there being no assurance that these guys wouldn't just do it again, despite us not even offering an explanation for why we'd just made a mess.
So, the waiters at the Royal Festival Hall Wagamama? The most professional and unflappable waiters I've encountered in a very very long time. We should have tipped more--in fact, I'm not sure we could have tipped enough.

p.s. This also marks the last time I'm eating out with these people.

Keywords: amazing waiters, good service