A Ledgered Meal: Wagamama, Heathrow Terminal Five

Heathrow Airport is a city in miniature, with around 200,000 travelers coursing through its concourses daily between arrivals and departures, ferried across terminals via buses and trams. Clusters of restaurants and shops form the reservoirs into which those freshly scanned and vetted by security are injected, to mill and wander and consume before flowing to their respective gates, torrents of humans and their wheeled luggage giving the departure lounges an aggressive shopping mall feel, replete with the invasive lighting and signage, territorially claimed bench seating, and the unmistakable duty-free perfume fug.

We landed in Terminal Three from Helsinki, got packed into and out of buses into Terminal Five, shambled through luggage and body screenings, and were shot forth into the concourse commons, just in time for lunch, give or take a couple of biological hours shifted by time zone differences. The first signage to catch our eye is the Pret A Manger, our standby for sandwiches, salads, and other fast eats while in the UK; Nancy immediately notes the lack of seating. The press of bodies gives your typical mob of holiday shoppers a run for their money. Food is critical, comfort is aspirational, personal space becomes non-negotiable. Scanning around, we spot another go-to from our travels: Wagamama.

At the turn of the millennium when we first visited London together, a friend had suggested that ramen shop as a must-try, and between the kinetic subterranean ambiance of shared benches of diners slurping noodles and the decidedly savory, comforting menu items, we were hooked. “Wagamama? That word means ‘selfish’ in Japanese,” was my sister’s reaction when we told her about the groovy dining spot in London.

I think “self-indulgent” is a kinder interpretation, and feels completely on-brand when I consider the number of times since that chain has come through with comfort food when we were far from home and equally worn out. Ramen in London? Absolutely, given the town’s cosmopolitan and competent culinary portfolio, particularly for casual dining. And if you’ve ever carried a torch for the Romance of finding shelter from the wintry dark of City Centre with a bowl of savory soup that fogs up your glasses as you dig in… well, you know that you know.

With less than a third of the way home from Finland and that first leg being an endurance test already, one would figure that this blast from the past would save the day like some comfort foood cavalry appearing at a critical plot point. No and yes, yes and no. It’s the nature of the cynic to normalize, if not outright flatten expectations: it’s in an airport, so it’s going to be busy, expensive, and probably not as good. After all, I realize that so much of what I once considered “hip London eats” were budding indies that became established chains: Pret, Wagamama, Itsu. Busaba was a fabulous Thai eatery that went out of business, so no corporate metastasis for them.

We approach the entrance, are perfunctorily greeted, and led to a spot on the bench, seated facing each other. The menus function as placemats and worksheets for the staffer who takes our order, jotting down our choices as their numerical designations. We’re tucked in among families, couples, and solo diners, the clatter and chatter of silverware and chopsticks on dishes setting a rhythmic counterpoint to the Auto-Tuned pop piped above the sound salad of conversations. This could be any one of our previous dining episodes: Covent Garden, Wigmore Street, Glasgow, Brighton. I’ll later learn that there are now over 200 locations worldwide, so what I’d been sentimentally assuming was organically choreographed chaos is a documented methodology replicated internationally.

Yasai yaki soba (#1141) is Nancy’s standby, so that’s easy. I’m in a ramen mood, so the chilli chicken (#25) it is. The bang bang cauliflower (#110) is a shared side, and I indulge in some bonus kimchi (#306) and sliced chilli peppers (#303) because why not apply additional heat to whatever cold/flu-like bug that I insist that I’m not getting over? Add a larger bottle of sparkling water, and there is our lunch, communicated to our server via catalog number, punched into the restaurant’s order management platform via the current generation of the wireless platform that seemed mindblowingly futuristic in 1998 and utterly ubiquitous in 2025.

It’s only after we place our order that Nancy notices that my go-to, cha han, is no longer on the menu. An absence is a presence, even or especially if it involves a beloved bowl of fried rice that managed to eschew that dish’s stereotypical soy sauce base. Nancy commiserates; it’s a comically scaled down version of seeing a favorite small business go out of business, but this is a corporate catalog item that was retired like a Blade Runner replicant. I wonder about the focus group studies, marketing research, the cost-benefit analyses that led to its removal. Perhaps they might pull a Taco Bell and stage a revival. A Springsteen lyric wanders by, silent and unbidden:

Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Our food arrives in fits and starts, because that’s how it’s supposed to. Nancy’s yaki soba is the first to land, and she digs in, balancing gusto for a favorite dish with time zone boosted hunger pangs and the awkwardness of being the only person eating. She notes that it tastes a bit muted. Whether that’s due to the cold/flu-like bug that we couldn’t test to determine whether it was COVID (because home test kits are practically invisible in Finnish retail, unlike Portland’s drugstores), or from travel stress, who’s to tell? My own bug-that-I-disavow shrugs in time.

The pan-fried cauliflower arrives next, the sweet caramelized bits countered by the bold interjections of onion, garlic, and ginger. It takes a query with the server as to the whereabouts of the drinks before the 750ml bottle of Tau touches down, its brand name knee-jerking a Warhammer 40,000 mental response about “hydrating for the Greater Good” (if you don’t get it, then you’re fortunate). The ramen arrives dead last, like our connecting flight that’s been delayed (and will be delayed again, adding almost three hours to our travel day), and it’s got a citrus tang like a Thai tom yum that clashes with the memorized imprint of umami. It’s enough to file away, not enough to mourn, another data point in a long day of digitized drift from one place and time to another.

At some point you note the discrepancies of now and memory, acknowledge the mismatched expectations, shrug, and graciously accept what the universe provides in your moment of need. This is far from an inexpensive lunch, but the restaurant’s self-serve payment portal accepts Amex, and frankly any nostalgia trip set in an airport probably isn’t worth the money (the Whataburger in DFW would like to have a word, I  know). My inner cynic hasn’t quite quashed the unexpected memory lane detour, but it framed the experience to show that I had come close to memorizing a restaurant franchise. What should be commemorated are the echoes of our other selves from when those meals mattered, now pixelated and noisy like the sub-megapixel camera images of the late 90's, vibrant then and collaterally cataloged since.

We leave just as the next wave of customers queue up, and one potential diner hands back his menu to seek something less busy (Pret, perhaps?). We got what I think we deserved: a moment away from the crowds and a helping of nourishment like a health pack in a video game; not just another travel transaction, but a wryly self-aware act of self-indulgence.