Wagaya, Fortitude Valley, Qld

At last, an Izakaya style Japanese restaurant has opened up in Brisbane! Wagaya is owned and operated by the same owners (Yes Food Group) as Wagaya in Sydney. Seeing I had dined at Wagaya, Sydney before, I was expecting some pretty good food here  in Brisbane too! Wagaya utilises a unique, touch-screen ordering system at each table, which allow its customers to order food at their own pace and add to their order as often as they wished. This was something new for Brisbane and definitely a great change!

Wagaya offers over 300 different types of dishes, we really had a hard time choosing what to order as there was so much we wanted to try!

Some mocktails to start us off. The blue one was called Sapphire and the lovely pink one was Ruby. Some of the ingredients in those pretty mocktails included guava, orange juice, lemon, peach, tonic water, calpis, grapefruit juice and pineapple juice. Everything was just so refreshing.

Sapphire (L), Ruby (R)

I really enjoyed the scampi sushi at Sushi Hotaru while in Sydney and finally, there's a place with scampi sushi in Brisbane!! I was so excited to see this on the menu. The scampi were good, but lacked sweetness of fresh scampi (I think these were frozen, and thawed). But at $7.50 for two pieces, I was pretty happy.

Scampi Sushi

 Salmon Chazuke - this was a rice dish topped with salmon in a light, green tea soup broth. I couldn't really taste the green tea, but it was flavoursome and was a good alternative to normal steamed rice.

Salmon Chazuke

Atsuage Mentai cheese. Grilled deep fried tofu topped with mentai (cod roe) and cheese. This was a pretty basic dish, except the tofu was deep fried till slightly crispy and wasn't too oily.

Atsuage Mentai Cheese

Chicken nanban & tartar sauce. Deep fried chicken dressed with sweet vinegar topped with tartar sauce. Apparently this is a local dish from the Miyazaki prefecture in Japan. The chicken was beautifully fried! The chicken was so crispy and tender. The tartar sauce was a nice match with the chicken. Oiishii!

Chicken Nanban & Tartar Sauce

 Scallop and garlic fried rice. There were pieces of diced and grilled scallops within the fried rice. I quite enjoyed this as the rice was light and fluffy and not oily at all.

Scallop and Garlic Fried Rice

Wafu pizza. This was on the menu as a recommended dish, consisting of tender pieces of chicken, Korean rice cakes, mushrooms and what tasted the sauce used on takoyaki. It would have been easier to eat if the pizza base was a little bit thicker, but this was tasty nevertheless.

Wafu Pizza

Grilled scallop with butter. One serve of this dish contains four plump, tender pieces of scallops with their roe, paired with sautéed mushrooms. It was buttery and tasty. So good.

Grilled Scallop with Butter

Grilled ox tongue. This was tender and nicely marinated and surprisingly a lot better than the grilled ox tongue at Sydney's Wagaya. Happy :)

Grilled Ox Tongue

Soft-shell crab with agedashi tofu. The soft-shell crab was nicely cooked, crispy and fresh without too much batter. Agedashi tofu came with a nice soy sauce too.

Soft-shell Crab with Agedashi Tofu

Finally, time for dessert! We ordered a mixed dessert plate, which my friend was eyeing off the menu before we even finished our meal, haha! The plate consisted of green tea cheese cake, black sesame ice cream and red bean daifuku. The green tea cheese cake was surprisingly good! It was not too sweet and definitely had a nice green tea flavour. Though the standout was probably the black sesame ice-cream, which wasn't too sweet and had a fragrant black sesame smell and taste! The daifuku was not nice and chewy which was a bit of a letdown. The dessert plate was good overall though.

Mixed Dessert Plate

Wagaya also has some large function rooms which cater for up to 20 people. This would make a great place for get-togethers and enjoy some good food in a nice atmosphere!

We ended up spending around $30 per person, which was pretty good value. There are still many other dishes I'd like to try and next time I will probably return and give their sushi and sashimi a try!

Thanks to Honeyhype for helping me with photos this time! Check out her blog. She is amazing.