The other day, my friend Lyndy texts me “hey there’s Watami in Manila!” My first reaction was.. “What’s Watami?” Apparently it’s a popular Japanese Casual Restaurant that started out in Singapore. Go figure. Anyway, so the long and short of it is that Watami’s a big deal. After tonight’s get together, I can kinda see why. Kinda.

The exterior of their Glorietta 1 branch.

The interior taken Panoramically with my iPhone. Sorry, for the warbled parts, it’s because there were people walking around the restaurant and weren’t captured properly.

The menu of favorites. Heads up: the dishes in the photo appear larger than they are in real life.

We were lucky and Citibank had a 50% off promo. The way it works is that as soon as you order Php2,500 worth of food, you get 50% off. Challenge Accepted!! We used this as an excuse to order ALOT of food.  Here you go (in no particular order):

Edamame & Special Roll – Edamame needs to be salted as it had no taste. Special roll wasn’t so special either.

Special Sashimi (4 types) – Sloppily plated and only 3 types — salmon, tuna, scallop.

Tempura Udon – Okay now this was yummy. The broth, flavorful and the udon was the perfect consistency (not too hard nor pasty soft). The tempura was served separately which I appreciated because soggy tempura is not pleasant. The one complaint I had was the temperature of the broth was not as steaming hot as I would have liked. I would definitely order this again though.

Watami Salad – This salad was okay. Maybe it was our fault because we didn’t toss it so we might not have gotten the flavors that the chef intended. Only after reaching the bottom of the plate did we realize that there was a sesame dressing. We thought the salad did not have much flavor to it before that. Also there was a strange unidentifiable white scoop in the middle. It tasted like chicken (or tuna) salad. By the way, gathering from the salad’s ingredients, this is not the healthiest of salads.

Beef Pepper Rice in a Stone Pot – This dish is similar to the Beef Pepper Rice/Pepper Lunch that we Filipinos know and love. The Watami version measures up pretty well and is, according to our server Diane, one of the more popular dishes in the restauraunt.

Scallop with Garlic and Butter – Soft, fresh scallops sauteed with a generous portion of garlic, mushrooms and just a touch of butter. I was in heaven. Order this.

Green Tea Parfait – I’m not one for desserts that have cornflakes in them so I stayed away from this. I can’t speak to it but here is a photo.

Chocolate Cake ala Mode – I took this on by myself. One person can finish it, it looks bigger in the photo. It’s pretty good. I wish the cake were gooey in the center. The consistency was more of a dense brownie than a fluffy cake.

Mango Yakult – Self explanatory.

Mission Accomplished! Our bill came to Php2,800+ and we paid only Php1,400 for all this food. It was a pretty good deal. Citibank should have these promos all the time.

Know before you go:

1) It gets pretty packed so a reservation might be a good idea.
2) Service is pretty fast. They are rated based on their performance so their staff will ask you to send a text message to give feedback. There is a hotline # to text.
3) It gets really loud so it’s not an intimate dinner place. This is a place where you meet friends and you cheer and talk excitedly and overall be happy and..loud. During our dinner, it was quite noisy. Lots of birthday singing, clapping, cheering, bursts of loud laughter and generally people having fun.

WATAMI – Japanese Casual Restaurant

Ground Floor, New Glorietta Mall Makati City

836-7141