Menus are Great

[menusaregreat]

more ridiculous pizza express thoughts - some time around 2008, they stocked vegan cheese in their restaurants, and it was available on request.  i believe it was redwood brand. they stopped stocking it because it kept going off without anyone buying it. 

then they brought back vegan cheese a couple of years ago! (2019?).

in between, they said that if you brought them a block of vegan cheese they’d make you a pizza with it - but that option has never really appealed to me.

also, I’m not actually vegan....just to confuse you.

[menusaregreat]

One of the things I need more info on is the situation with the fiorentina pizza at pizza express. Fiorentina is pizza with spinach, and an egg cracked into the middle (a move dubbed ‘controversial’ by the Daily Mail - surely, it’s just a nod to New Zelanad?) and cooked in the pizza oven.

 It was a classic, on the menu for a very long time, and then got removed - restaurant cited lack of egg cooking equipment in the kitchen as the reason (?). However, it is now back on the menu. How long was it off for? Was it put back due to public demand? Whilst it wasn’t on the menu, rumours spread among the public facebook comments that some restaurants would still make it for you if you knew which chef to ask - a clandestine fiorentina provision network. 

I need more information on this history of the fiorentina. 

This is the real hard hitting journalism that everyone else is afraid of writing about. 

[menusaregreat]

Here’s the Wagamama UK menu from 2010. I don’t remember the sama salad, I wonder if it was short lived? My aforementioned Saien Soba is there, but notably no Donburi - a delicious large rice bowl dish that comes with miso and pickles, if you’re lucky.

Most notably to me, there’s no katsu curry on this menu! When did that come in? When did Wagamama stop using and stocking menma? When did the lovely plum wine leave?

[menusaregreat]

Some time around 2007, possibly a few years before, I had my first Wagamama in the Oracle in Reading, and I had a dish called saien soba. This dish was removed from the menu some time between 2014-2020. 

It was a large comforting bowl of noodles, tofu and vegetables in a broth. It was vegan if ordered with specific noodles, and I loved it at the time. I ate it a few more times after that, celebrating when Wagamama came to my home town of Bournemouth, but I eventually realised that it was the plainest thing on the menu. 

I started eating other things instead - the yasai katsu curry, or the yasai itame (another noodle soup, with a spicy coconut broth), things with more flavour. I wonder if this was removed from the menu due to its lack of flavour - but then again, why did it stay on the menu for so long?

[menusaregreat]

Well this is a strange thing for me to be doing, but life is short and I bloody love menus. 

For a long time I’ve had a special interest in menus, and I particularly love seeing the development of menus I’ve loved over time. So I decided to make this tumblr blog as a place to post about the menus I love and why.