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I was a little suspicious when I read that Wagamama had replaced Nobu as London's "most popular" restaurant in the 2006 Zagat Survey. Was this a genuine phenomenon or merely an attempt to drum up a bit of publicity? Like Harden's, Zagat's employs members of the public to rank different restaurants, but it isn't clear whether the editors have allowed for the fact that Wagamama has 21 branches in London in contrast to Nobu's three--and Nobu Berkeley wasn't even open when the Survey was compiled. On the face of it, it's hardly surprising that more members of the public picked their local branch of Wagamama as their favourite restaurant rather than Nobu for the simple reason that there are more of them. I called Zagat's PR in the hope of getting to the bottom of this, but her PA told me she'd gone to lunch. Whether to Wagamama or Nobu, she didn't say.

Wagamama is one of the great success stories of the London restaurant business. Founded in 1992 by Alan Yau, the chain now boasts 50 branches worldwide and was valued at £102.5m when it changed hands earlier this year. Yau is one of the capital's most creative restaurateurs--he went on to set up Hakkasan in 2002 and Yauatcha in 2004--and even though he parted company with Wagamama in 1997 the success of the chain testifies to his great ability to re-package Asian fast food so it appeals to trendy young things. Wagamama is the Pizza Express of the 21st Century.

For review purposes, I picked the branch in Harvey Nichols, not because it came highly recommended--all the branches are pretty much the same, I think--but because my wife wanted to buy a new pair of shoes. I took my two-year-old daughter and six-month-old son, which turned out to be a mistake. Wagamama is located in the store's basement and the only way I could get down there, given that I was pushing a double buggy, was via a lift. As anyone who's shopped at Harvey Nichols will know, the lifts are so infrequent it would be quicker to join the Natural Law Party and learn how to levitate. One eventually came after about 15 minutes, but it was so crowded the occupants were evidently engaged in an attempt to earn a place in the Guinness Book of Records. I ended up ignoring the "No Pushchairs" sign and taking the escalator, even though this involved doing an impersonation of Atlas, with my two children and the double buggy standing in for the globe.

No sooner had I sat down, than my two-year-old announced she wanted to pee, so it was off to the toilet. Now, I don't know about the food at Wagamama, but the gentlemen's lavatories at this particular branch were among the most popular I've ever visited. I've seen less soiled loos in Australian pubs. No doubt this is because they're not restricted to the restaurant's patrons, but they were pretty disgraceful nevertheless. I wanted to dip my daughter in a vat of Swarfega before returning to the table.

Luckily, things improved after that. Our waiter produced a "mini menu" for the children--chargrilled seasonal vegetables with soba noodles were very reasonably priced at £3.60--and my order of deep-fried king prawns arrived in less than two minutes. My wife confined herself to one course--a big bowl of ramen noodles in vegetable soup--which was just as well considering the industrial quantities they serve up at Wagamama. I opted for a main course of deep-fried chicken in a curry sauce with rice. The Zagat Surveyors must attach more significance to quantity than quality, if our meal was anything to go on. It filled the tank, but it was more like diesel fuel than premium unleaded.

Given the location, our fellow diners were predictably glamorous. I was a little preoccupied with making sure my daughter confined the distribution of her soba noodles to within a 20-yard radius so didn't get a chance to check out the rest of the customers, but after we left my wife told me that we'd been surrounded by models.

"Why didn't you point them out to me?" I protested.

"Why do you think?" she said.

I found my visit to Wagamama a pretty exhausting experience, but at least I was fuelled up for the Everest-like ascent to the women's shoe department on the third floor. Wagamama does what it says on the tin--it's reasonably-priced Asian fast food--but to describe it as better than Nobu is a bit like claiming Pizza Express is better than the River Café. It's better than McDonald's--but that's about it.