When I go to Antwerp I always enjoy trying out the local restaurants. Belgians (with the exception of the suicidal taxi driver I just met who didn't seem to have a positive bone in his body) tend to have a great attitude to food and drink. Any nation that can dedicate so much effort to the triple delights of chocolate, beer and chips has to be worthy of our admiration. However, since my friends who lived there moved back to the UK, I don't get so many chances to eat out when I visit and I was really pleased when our recent business meeting agenda arrived with 'Dinner' (or rather 'Diner' – the host was French) written on the bottom. Surely I must be in for a bit of a treat.

Wok Wok Wok, Wok A Way Beach

Nobody had booked anything since the two hosts of the meeting were not local and are at the level of seniority that means they don't ever have to think about practical things or other people's comfort. My boss said he'd eaten in what he described as an excellent 'Wok-place' on a previous visit and a colleague decided that she knew exactly where he met and rushed off to book a table. What he'd had in mind was a place where you pick the ingredients you like the look of, choose a sauce and the chef 'woks' them there and then in front of you. I think what particularly appealed to him was that he'd been able to go back as many times as he liked to have more. What we got was something almost entirely different.

Between a Wok and a Hard Place

Wok A Way is a small Belgian chain of fast food oriental restaurants attempting to fill a niche of 'better than BurgerKing' but with aspirations to be a sort of local Wagamama. It's been running since 1999 and it's fair to say it's not exactly taken over the world and it hasn't got everything right yet based on our experience. There are a couple of Wok A Way outlets in Antwerp and the one we visited was the South Antwerp branch on De Burburestraat , a rather upmarket and trendy area.

On entering the place looked nice with clean, crisp lines, lots of light wooden laminate and an open kitchen where I expected to be able to watch the chefs work their magic. We passed some tables and a bar with stools where you could sit and watch the kitchen preparing the food and then we got a shock when we noticed that our colleagues appeared to be sitting on the floor. As we got closer we realised that the table was sunken and whilst they were indeed sitting on cushions on the floor, their feet were in a well. One of the ladies had been quite distressed about just how to get into such a position whilst wearing a skirt and was already worrying about how she would get out again at the end of the meal.

Don't Wok Away Renee

Menus were available in Flemish, French and English and were not very long in any language. There were three soups, one of which was a 'main course' soup, nine 'dim sum' options, half a dozen sushi 'sets' and a page and a half of 'wok dishes' ranging from standard dishes through to some more expensive specials. Dim Sum was a bit of a catch-all phrase covering any starters that weren't sushi and would probably not have met the definition in any true Chinese restaurant. If it was small and you got a few pieces, then they called it dim sum. If you wanted to you could design your own wok dish by picking your meat, fish or vegetable, one of two spice or herb combinations and a sauce from a rather long list.

Most of us decided to opt for a meal-deal of either sushi or dim sum followed by a standard grade wok dish with a drink thrown in for good measure. The cost of this combo was €12 which probably should have been good value if I'd had any faith that the restaurant had actually worked out what made up each 'meal'. The waitress dumped a few sheets of plain paper and a pen on the table and told us to write down what we wanted then send someone over the counter to place the order and pay the bill. A few eyebrows were raised at such an arrangement and left us with the feeling that they somehow expected us to do a runner after scarfing down our noodles. I think it would have been tricky as I doubt the colleague in the skirt could have got out of the hole we were sitting in without drawing attention to herself.

Hey Sugar, Take a Wok on the Wild Side

Some of the dishes had fun names though not necessarily very descriptive ones. My starter of 'One Night in Bangkok' consisted of 4 steamed prawn dumplings. The link between product and name was far from obvious. If they'd been fish balls I could have seen a tenuous association with ping pong balls but little Chinese parcels didn't really fit the bill. For main course I ordered a dish called a 'seafood slammer' but a couple of the ladies chose 'Bollywood Beauty' or 'Shanghai Syndrome'.

With the order placed and paid for, the food came very quickly suggesting that the starters were pre-cooked or rapidly warmed through. Fast food should of course be fast but if you're sitting down with a group of people you don't want it so fast that they have to bring the indigestion tablets with the coffees. All the dishes were presented on small black plastic trays with a choice of chopsticks or fork-and-spoon wrapped up in a paper napkin. I suspect the black tray system might have been a way to reduce the need to wipe the tables down between diners or to make it safer for the waitress to serve a bunch of people who were sitting on the floor without throwing their food over them.

Wok on By, My foolish pride

Three of us were indulging in the delights of a night in the Thai capital and not entirely thrilled with the experience. The dumplings arrived in a small bamboo steamer, laid out on a banana leaf lining and looking like pale little foetuses. They were accompanied by a nasty plastic pot of chili sauce which was far too big for the number of dumplings provided and generally lowered the tone of the dish. The guy next to me had filo wrapped prawns that looked like an Iceland party platter special – very classy. On the other side a colleague was eating tuna sushi rolls and failing to do a good job with his chopsticks leading to the sacrifice of one piece of sushi onto the submerged floor and much speculation about how the restaurant would be able to clean the holes afterwards. The dumplings were wrapped in an anaemic, sticky coating that seemed to be incapable of keeping company with the interior contents so that pretty much the only way to control the little beasts was to stab one with a chop stick and bundle it into my mouth.

When all was done and dusted on the starters, the trays were cleared and the main courses followed very quickly. This summer we had a holiday in Australia and almost lived off noodles so I was looking forward to a bit of vacation nostalgia and imagining something really tasty and interesting. My dish was just really disappointing and, based on comments around the table, I wasn't in a minority for thinking that. The bowls were the size of a large high sided soup or cereal bowl and the contents weren't exactly generous. One colleague offered the observation that whilst it wasn't a lot of food it was more than enough of what it was – i.e. a very 'samey' dish with little to differentiate the first mouthful from the last. My dish had been described as a mix of seafood, noodles and veggies with a spicy black pepper sauce but they'd omitted one really important detail from the description – that it had clearly been designed as a way to eat into the European celery mountain. I hate the stuff but it's exceptionally hard to avoid when it's chopped in tiny pieces and thorough stir fried. Everything in the dish was small and it felt a bit like eating hot coleslaw – tiny bits of carrot and celery, the world's teeniest shrimps that looked like they'd barely felt the water flowing over their exoskeletons before being harvested far too young. There were some tiny rubber bands of squid and some rather slimy pieces of white fish. Whether by accident or design (perhaps to make eating the easier) the noodles had been chopped into tiny pieces which I also found disappointing. What's the point in having noodles if they aren't long and stringy? If I wanted short noodles I'd buy alphabetti spaghetti.

You got me Wok-ing and a Wolling, Wok-ing and a reeling

I'm a whiz with chopsticks so I had no problem to get through my dish, following the little message written on the inside of the bowl encouraging me to get to the bottom. The spicy black pepper sauce was neither spicy nor peppery and it took quite a lot of chili sauce to give the dish any personality at all.

With the main courses polished off we were all feeling a bit flat and some still a bit hungry. A couple of us ordered ice-cream and were disappointed when it arrived in little cardboard tubs like a tub of Haagen Dazs. How much effort would it have taken to put it in a bowl? A few people had coffees or additional drinks and then we were all finished and it was time to leave. I had a general sense that we'd have received more human interaction if we'd gone to McDonalds. The food wasn't bad – it was just very forgettable and the interesting surroundings and strange seating couldn't compensate for the overwhelming ordinariness of the food. I don't think anyone will be rushing back to eat there again.

Details

Wok A Way Antwerp South
De Burburestraat 43
Antwerp

This branch is open for lunch Tuesday to Friday and for dinner every day except Monday. Closing time in the evenings is 10pm. Take away is also available.