Wagamama : Way of the Noodle

I ate at several Wagamama restaurants when I visited London. Sentimental over my trip and wanting to learn more about cooking Asian foods, I bought the cookbook. While I'm happy to report that all of the recipes I've tried in this cookbook have been very good, I only gave the cookbook a 4 star rating. Why? It's not as user friendly as it might be. Being a North American cook, I found that many ingredients were quite difficult to identify because they were given French (or other) names in the cookbook. As a result, I e-mailed Wagamama (using their website, which encourages questions and discussion) explaining my dilemma and asking for help identifying some of the key ingredients that seemed to reappear throughout the recipes. One year later, I still haven't had the courtesy of a reply. With the help of the world wide web, I've been able to translate some of the ingredients myself, but doing so has added to the overall time any dish requires to prepare. Some ingredients I still can't translate. Others are difficult to find in the store (although I live in a major metro area with a lot of ethnic shopping opportunities). As a result, their are several recipes I still haven't tried in the book. On the whole, a good book, but probably not for the North American who wants to avoid researching and hunting before s/he cooks.