West End food

Sometimes I find myself on oxford street when I get completely starving and feel like I need food NOW otherwise I'll end up punching one of my fellow shoppers.

And then I realise that I am in fact on Oxford Street where the nicest thing you can find to eat is a Belgian waffle...

Not anymore..

Enter Vapiano

First time I heard of them was from my brother in law who had spent a weekend in Stockholm and recommended that I'd go there if I ever went to Stockholm.

By the time I went there, a year or so later, I'd forgotten all about it.

But then Emma took me there for lunch one day when I visited her last year.

As far as I can remember the food was nice, not the best, but still very good.

But the main thing that made me like it is the concept, it is very good if you are going out with people that you don't know very well and find it hard to decide about who's paying the bill or how to split it. 

It's not too much of a problem here since people are usually very relaxed about either just splitting the bill in half or say - I'll pay today, you pay next time.

But in Sweden however, where it is important to split the bill correctly down to the last penny. "I had a coke and you had a freshly squeezed orange juice so I should pay 30p less than you..." is a normal conversation you would hear in a restaurant in Sweden...

And that's where Vapiano comes in and saves the day.

However many people you are in the party, everyone gets their own individual "credit card", and everything you order gets put on there and then you take it to the till and pay for what you have had on the way out. 

Absolutely brilliant!

And as I said at the beginning of this ramble, they have now opened in London on Great Portland Street.   

I noticed it when I cycled home from La Ratatouille last time, but didn't think it was the same thing, and then yesterday I saw it again, which made me google it today and realised that it is in fact the same thing.

Not sure how long it has been there so I could be completely lost here saying that it is a new place.

At least I know where to have my lunch on my next shopping trip.