Wasabi

So wasabi has decided to increase their price for their very subpar food. Chicken katsu curry is now £9.45 and if that’s how much I have to pay why don’t I go to a proper normal restaurant.
Utterly unacceptable pricing given how poor the food is to start off with.
It’s only beginning of feb and they have increased their price twice already!

Ferociously busy– that’s really the distinguishing feature of this outlet. forget «quickly grabbing some lunch» if you’re after hot food between about 11.45 and 2 pm; you’ll likely find yourself queuing for at least ten minutes.

A great place for takeaways, but as is with any takeaway sushi joints, do not expect the highest of qualities.
Some of the sushi boxes are solid at very good prices, but just as many are underwhelming, so be sure to make a careful pick. The hot bento boxes always command long lines, so be sure to allot enough time for coming by.
All in all, I prefer Wasabi to Itsu — both for taste, value and variety.

Wasabi’s are a dime a dozen in London, but this one is a bit different in that it doesn’t have any seating. It’s strictly a takeaway joint.
It’s located on the bottom floor of the main Canary Wharf shopping complex, quite close to the Canary Wharf DLR station. It offers the usual pre-​packed sushi boxes and bowls, along with the little individual sushi things and hot food.
I’m giving it 4 stars because if you know what to expect and swing by at the right time, you get decent, consistent sushi without much fuss at an affordable price.
The place is A MESS around lunchtime due to the bazillion people who work in Canary Wharf. However, stop by before 11:20am on a weekday and I promise you it will be all but empty. On the sushi front, the salmon nigiris and various rolls are decent. They’re not great. Then again, you’re at a takeaway sushi place. You can’t really expect glorious food, can you? The tuna, like a lot of tuna in London, is not very good. I recommend avoiding it. All the other individual bits and bobs are fine, and give you the flexibility to pig out on sushi, or have a light meal… or anything in between.
The hot food is nothing to write home about. It’s hot, and that’s about it. So come early, go nuts with salmon, take it easy on tuna, and you’ll be alright.

I always get their tofu yakisoba. Definitely not the best noodles I’ve ever had but it does the trick when I want something a bit stodgy and definitely unhealthy for lunch!
Their chicken yakisoba is good too but oddly, they use thicker noodles.
The most annoying thing about this branch is the horrible queuing system they have set up. Massive lines, huge crowds waiting for their food, all jammed up together in a small area. They’re a victim of their own success but the store layout is not conducive to a good customer experience!

Okay, review 1 of my sushi taste off today.
Wasabi is on the ground floor of the shopping area of Canary Wharf.
In my opinion, it will never be more than 3 stars either.
Is it convenient? Yes
Is it tasty? Yes
Are there better sushi outlets? Most def
If you prefer something other than the overpriced sarnies at the other eateries, this is pretty good.
I came early enough to actually see the sushi being made so I know it’s fresh but it’s nothing so fabulous that you’ll make a special trip to get it again; all the Wasabi establishments are like this.
Today, I had the salmon bento box. It was alright and certainly filled a crack… but equally forgettable. Overall, an a-​ok lunchtime alternative.

I come here a lot, but it’s really annoying.
Why do I keep coming here even though it’s annoying? Because most other places in Canary Wharf are equally annoying.
The problem is there are just too many people trying to get their lunch at the same time. You’ll queue for 10 minutes here and have to accept the weird queuing mechanism (which admittedly is probably more efficient than any other method) only to get your katsu curry which will inevitably actually just be a very large lump of rice at the bottom of the tub with the katsu curry dumped on top. And they only give you a fork to eat it with, so it becomes even more fiddly!
The end result is no matter how careful you are at mixing the curry sauce into the rice, there will always be a golf-​ball sized bit of rice in the middle that you can’t get sauce to. Unless you empty the contents into a plate. But where are you going to find a plate in your office? :)
And back to the subject of fiddly, the sushi is worse, because it’s wrapped in plastic that needs 2 hands to unwrap, so half the time your bit of sush explodes as you try to free it from it’s transparent prison. But boy is it tasty once you free it :)

A good takeaway alternative to packet sandwiches in Canary Wharf, but hardly top quality Japanese/​oriental food.
If
you pass by during the lunchtime peak hour, you’ll encounter massive
queues and a lot of shouting from staff, which is an oragnised chaos
enough to put off a lot of people. Don’t worry though, like a foodcourt
in Hong Kong, you’ll get through the line in no time.
The sushi
isn’t great, but I am a fan of the hot food, even if it is ready made
food that the staff microwave and place into warmers at the counter. The
portions are massive, and very filling, but this quantity is offset by
the average quality.
The food handling
isn’t the most precise, so on occasions I’ve found small amounts of
other dishes in the same box, but as long as you don’t have specific
dietry needs, it’s not a problem.
All that aside, if you need a
quick and relatively cheap hot meal at Canary Wharf, and don’t mind
sitting on a bench in the shopping mall to eat it, then Wasabi is a good
choice.

A good takeaway alternative to packet sandwiches in Canary Wharf, but hardly top quality Japanese/​oriental food.
If you pass by during the lunchtime peak hour, you’ll encounter massive queues and a lot of shouting from staff, which is an oragnised chaos enough to put off a lot of people. Don’t worry though, like a foodcourt in Hong Kong, you’ll get through the line in no time.
The sushi isn’t great, but I am a fan of the hot food, even if it is ready made food that the staff microwave and place into warmers at the counter. The portions are massive, and very filling, but this quantity is offset by the average quality.
As others have said, the food handling isn’t the most precise, so on occasions I’ve found small amounts of other dishes in the same box, but as long as you don’t have specific dietry needs, it’s not a problem.
All that aside, if you need a quick and relatively cheap hot meal at Canary Wharf, and don’t mind sitting on a bench in the shopping mall to eat it, then Wasabi is a good choice.

Just bad!!! Never tasted anything worse than the foods from here… I want to hive 0 star If I can.

Of the sushi restaurants around in the Wharf, Wasabi is my favourite. The sushi sets are quite reasonably priced compared to some of the other places. I love the fact that they do individually wrapped sushi (my hubby sometimes surprises me with random pieces of sushi pulled out of his pocket after work…) I also love that they have Japanese desserts (which makes quite a nice change from the mousses, cakes and tarts that are around).
The hot food is average, but it hits the spot when you want something quick and easy to take home.
Lunch time is insane here! The queues snake out into the shopping centre — take note, the outer queue is for hot food; the inner queue is for sushi (and soup it seems now). Be prepared to be pushed, jostled and shouted into the right space! But worth it, if simply because it’s not a sandwich and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg!

I don’t mind the rice/​noodle meals that Wasabi push out. It hits the spot when I’m looking for a heavy lunch without the heavy tab.
However, I don’t understand why this branch are so casual about the way food is handled. I don’t eat meat and I’ve had two occasions (too many) where I’ve found chicken in my tofu rice meal! If you do eat meat you probably won’t see any big deal with this, but it really makes me heave. To top it off, they aren’t really apologetic about it. Poor show Wasabi — A little effort could go a long way!

So it’s cheap. Unfortunatly I have been disappointed every time i have had hot food there — maybe with the one exception of chicken katsu curry. Sushi is OK, but fiddly with the individual wraps and the quality is definitely better at Itsu.

Eugh there is nothing worse than bad sushi, it should be made illegal. Yes, I know it’s a Wasabi, what do I expect? I expect mediocre/​blah sushi, not bad. Their crab and salmon sashimi California roll is baaad. The salmon actually made me feel so ill that I couldn’t eat the rest of the blah sushi.
‘Cos it’s Canary Wharf, they have that insular lunchtime crush of people and the staff have to get very shouty to corrall people into line. Not for the shy of heart.
My advice: save yourself for a decent sushi place, don’t let bad sushi here turn you off for life. But they have nice noodle soup.

Although this looks like typical fast food chain store that offers terrible Japanese food it actually turn out really delicious! I love the chicken curry rice, teriyaki chicken rice and the spicy pork rice! It offers great food in a tub only for £4.45, what a bargain! And for the first time I tried the chicken fried rice I wasn’t disappointed at all! The Canary Wharf branch offers the best food so far of all that I have tried! You always get a queue when you are there that’s how nice it is! If you prefer sushi, they offer pretty decent ones much better that Tesco or Waitrose.