IT'S easy to sniff at restaurant chains. Particularly Italian chains. Particularly Italian chains founded by Germans. Particularly Italian chains founded by Germans which operate a painfully systematic radio frequency identification chip card policy for customers to order and pay.
Almost too easy.
Each restaurant boasts its own herb garden and '100-year-old olive tree'
Still, it's hard not to be impressed by Vapiano - a fast-casual Italian restaurant chain which has exploded from one restaurant in Hamburg in 2002 to 157 restaurants in 33 different countries thirteen years later.
Next month will see Vapiano launch their 158th global operation in Manchester's £30m revitalised Corn Exchange and their fourth (and largest with 400 covers) site in the UK - with three London sites in Soho, Bankside and on Great Portland Street already well-established.
So with two months until Vapiano launch in the city, we were whisked off down to The Great Wen so that they might fan their feathers and we avoid any substantial work and get a mite wobbly...
Corn Exchange
Vapiano SohoMilanese designer, Matteo Thun (who recently bagged a 'Best Designed' award for his Vapiano design concept) has achieved a light, bright crispness in Vapiano, but also a solid oak functionality and insipid biegeness chirped up by various cute features: plant walls, abstract veg sketched on chalkboards and little pots of basil to pick on each table.
To really cram that greener-than-green spirit down your gullet each restaurant boasts its own herb garden and '100-year-old olive tree' - meaning Vapiano will gain instant access to Manchester's exclusive tree-hoiked-up-in-the-restaurant club alongside Mr Cooper's, Sakana, Australasia, Tattu and, erm, Waxy O'Connors.
Ancient topiary aside, the real thrill of Vapiano goes on behind the counter, where a brigade of showboating chefs patrol express order stations and hurl out an impossible number of dishes to punters. In the corner a small team of chefs spend all day pummeling dough and rolling out twelve types of pasta from 'The Manifattura' (The Factory). Not your average chain behaviour this.
Vapiano's indoor herb garden
Beavering away...Having suffered a sketchy breakfast on the pendolino, Vapiano's Piatto Antipasti (£6.95) was welcome tuck indeed: the meats, Proscuitto tipo Parma, salami, pepperoni, were fine; alongside roasted vegetables, homemade pesto, bruschetta and Grana Padano. The buffalo mozzarella (main image), though, was dreamy: milky, cold and as plump as Daniela Dessi's bosum. Much like ravioli or ebullient swearing, a good mozzarella is hard to find outside Italy - Vapiano's is up there.
Less so was another of Vapiano's signatures, a strawberry and red onion salad (£6.50). Like mango and Sriracha or avocado coffee, it's weird for weird's sake. Blumenthal wankery - leave it in the lab. They pulled it back with a creamy Granchi Di Fiume (£9.95); campanelle pasta with crayfish and fresh vegetables in lobster sauce. With 29 varieties, Vapiano's pasta menu is prodigious. If you can't find something to suit you probably don't like food. Same with pizzas, if you like moo (I'll assume you do) order the Boscaiola (£10.95) with beef fillet, creamed mushroom sauce, mozzarella, gorgonzola and caramelised onions - base booze food. Ace.
Speaking of booze, we tried most if it, can't remember any of it. Order some though, something wet and red, it'll do you good.
Piatto antipasti
Dreamy mozzarellaFood and booze aside, the most impressive element of this Vapiano jolly was the numbers; the punters flooding in through the doors are staggering.
"Is it always like this?" I ask gawping as three customers jumps to 300 within half an hour around midday.
"Every single lunchtime," says Vapiano's marketing bod Vikki O'Neill.
"How many people do you get through?"
"Nearly 30,000 customers a week," says O'Neill, "and that's just our three restaurants in London."
Crikey. That's over 1.5m a year (or 18% of London's population). Though Manchester's Corn Exchange presents a different challenge entirely. Unlike the three London restaurants, slap-bang in the middle of crowded boroughs, the Corn Exchange remains unproven and failed dismally under its two previous guises.
Yes Manchester Arena next door pulls in over one million hungry concert-goers each year, but mid-week daytime trade is a whole different animal - particularly when you've 400 seats to fill and sixteen other new restaurants to compete with.
Vapiano is not your average chain restaurant, now to prove it to the punters...
Vapiano Manchester will launch at the Corn Exchange in October 2015.
