Vapiano: Watch your food, for you will salivate

“I’m hungry”
“Well you could cook?”
“Or You could cook?
“Or…we could watch someone ELSE cook!”
“Sounds good. Let’s call it Vapiano.”

I imagine this must have been the opening conversation a few years ago, but in Estonian, which gave rise to the cross-European, Italian food phenomenon that is Vapiano (originating, unsurprisingly, in Estonia). We all love knowing what goes into our food, and there’s nothing like watching a work in progress, and at Vapiano that is the main gimmick.

That’s not to say it is the only gimmick, but it is the only one which actually seems to serve a purpose. Sure, you get handed a credit-card when you come in, on which your food choices are logged whilst they are made and which you pay off on leaving, but from several visits I cannot actually work out what the point of these are, other than for the unrivalled hilarity which must ensue when people accidentally pull out their Tesco Clubcard and try to pay with that.

Onto the food, and it is rather delicious (or at least, having seen it lovingly prepared in front of us by charismatic and regularly handsome chefs, we convince ourselves that it is). You also get a choice of the Italiano staples – there is a pizza queue, a pasta queue and for those that hate everything food should be, a salad queue. You queue, you tell the chef what you want and how you want it, and you get a show for the next 5 minutes before being handed a steaming plate of linguini, unless you have chosen a different pasta type, in which case if you have been given linguini you really should have said something to the chef 4 minutes ago when you saw him reach for it. Learn your pasta types, you neanderthals.

A WORD OF WARNING, HOWEVER: The pizza queue, whilst often looking substantially shorter than the other two, actually does have a sort of ghost-queue. This is due to those people who have ordered, inexplicably become impatient watching an opaque, motionless giant oven cook their food, so been given an electronic beeper which will let them know to return when it is ready.

Lastly, the decor. It’s nice, its moodily lit, and there are stools which means it’s a little bit hipster because as every pop up in London will tell you, hipsters don’t need back support.

This is a tasty restaurant, and I would recommend it for:
After work dates
Business lunches
A nando’s-speed lunch with a few mates
Getting rid of a few useless old membership cards and sneaking a free meal in the process
Essential info:
Address: 19-21, Great Portland Street
Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus
Booking unnecessary as their customer turnover is quite fast