In response to this letter, Wagamama graciously sent me the following reply and £20 worth of vouchers. I applaud their efforts to adapt to Western values, but I fear they still need some more guidance in how to correctly use full stops and capital letters.
dear derek,
thank you for taking the time to inform us of your experience at wagamama spitalfields. we pride ourselves on the highest standards of food, service and customer care. I was therefore upset to hear that you had a negative experience on your recent visit and for this I sincerely apologise
I can appreciate how disappointing it must have been not to be able to eat the delicious chicken katsu curry as quickly as you desired using our chopsticks and for this I apologise. on a positive note, I am pleased to advise you that a portion of our stores already offer western cutlery as an alternative to chopsticks and that over the next three weeks these will be available in all wagamama restaurants across the uk
further to your enquiry about purchasing wagamama sauce, we do sell a selection of sauces in large supermarkets but unfortunately the katsu curry is not one of those as it remains exclusive to our restaurants
I have enclosed some complimentary vouchers so you are able to revisit wagamama and dig into the chicken katsu curry with full force using cutlery. these vouchers can be used in any of our uk locations. once again please accept my apologies and thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback
Dear Sir/Madam,
I ate at one of your establishments in Spitalfields recently and for the most part the experience was a satisfactory one. The seating offered all the comfort one would expect from a wooden bench and the staff did their best to accommodate our party of eleven. I ordered the breaded chicken and sticky rice with curry sauce – and you need to sell that sauce in supermarkets, by the way, so I can bulk-buy and then bathe in it – and it was delicious. The only fly in the ointment was the apparatus I was expected to eat it with; chopsticks are not the implements of choice for most Western people. I cannot speak for the whole of Europe, but here in the UK we like to eat out with the sole intention of shovelling as much food into our face-holes as possible. It is impossible to do this with chopsticks, especially if you were saddled at birth with chubby sausage-like digits like yours truly. I very much understand you’re trying to replicate the experience of eating at a genuine Japanese noodle-bar, but when a customer requests a knife with which to eat their dinner, I think there should be some available. I was told by the waitress that there were no such implements for diners to use and that I’d have to soldier on with my set of chopsticks and a spoon. I’m sorry sirs, but a spoon quite literally does not cut it!
As it were, I struggled on with my meal – how I wished I had ordered the soup! – and subsequently spent about an hour ferrying my food to my mouth, four grains of rice at a time. I hope you take my suggestions on board and if you cannot provide knives to guests, at least warn them in advance to bring their own cutlery. Frankly, this refusal to acknowledge and accommodate Western eating habits shows an unwillingness to assimilate to British culture. I find this unacceptable.
Yours patriotically,
Derek Haselhurst-Horton
