Wagaya Japanese Restaurant

My partner and I recently visited Wagaya as we imagined that it would be of better quality than what we found it to be. Essentially, it appears to be a fast-food Japanese restaurant. The novelty is that you get to sit in cubicles/booths which have their own interactive screens whereby you can order your food on a display screen. The food comes extremely quickly, which we found quite amazing, and the staff are lovely. The prices are also reasonable but we found the quality of the food lacking. The tempura dishes were very greasy and generally over-cooked. Our tempura squid was hard and dry, and had little flavour. My partner had teriyaki chicken which was quite a nice dish, and I had kimchi fried rice, and that was quite nice too, but we did think that the quality and care in the preparation of the dishes was still not there. We won't go back, but in some ways we did enjoy the experience, for the novelty, if not for the food.

Great variety of food ranging from grilled items to ramen. Their tan-tan ramen is one of the best available in Brisbane. The experience of ordering your food independently through a touch-screen device will surprise some customers. Good news is that the restaurant is clean and they adopt hygienic cleaning habits e.g. wipe screens after each seating.

The most disappointing thing was they run a different menu at night than they do at lunch. Whilst it was nice to have sashimi and sushi, I wanted the grilled menu. When I asked I got a small menu compared to one one on the website. Look it was nice, and for a lunch break it's suitable but a catch up with friends where you have the time to try different dishes, not so much.

Excellent food and draught Japanese beer. Particularly enjoyed the sashimi and gyoza. Only let down - the full menu on the website was not available.

Really wishing I could give this place a better review. We have both eaten here before and has had some really fresh dishes. Perhaps today wasn't their day as the fish still had skin and sinew left on it and was flavourless. The crispy skin salmon pieces were hit and miss. Some pieces were nicely cooked others to the point of not being able to chew the skin it just would break down. Look, we all have our good and bad days, we've been to this place 3 times. 2 good 1 bad. So if you're passing through it's still probably worth checking out and seeing what's on offer.