TLDR: There are better cafes or places to hangout. Alright food, but subpar setting, and pricey for what it is.
(Slightly) longer review for those not in a hurry:
Taste (4/5) :
Don't get me wrong, I liked the food, but it wasn't absolutely fantastic like most reviews seem to have experienced. I tried some of their most popular dishes, but none of them made me CRAVE for them afterwards. They were nice in the moment, but not impressionable afterwards. I particularly liked the silky tofu cake and the cheese toast! As a fan of tofu and also cheesecake, Wanoka struck a great balance between the two :) The cheese toast was also a thick blend, and the roe in there gave it an umami streak that tied the toast together. But the prices. As an avid foodie, I like to shell out money for good food, but I feel like the quantity did not quite justify the price of the items on the menu.
Desserts were around the $5 mark per slice or portion - which isn't too bad, I guess, but the toast and other savoury items on the menu were close to $10 for 1 - 2 slices of taste and the flavour pieces. I was really expecting much better bread for the price I was paying, but it was just regular, no-frills bakery bread I could buy for $10 for 2 loaves at Metro.
For context, my open cheese toast as $11.50 for 1 thick slice of toast with cheese, and a small side of salad. The egg sandwich was a regular egg sandwich with a small side of salad, and that cost $7.50. I would have expected the cheese sandwich to be below $8 and the egg salad probably below $6 for what it was.
Drinks were priced as per regular though.
Place (2/5) :
From the reviews and instagram aesthetic I was expecting the interiors to be more ... Japanese-cafe-esque? But there were small booths like from regular hk cafes, and the interior design was simple to the point of being almost minimized. The only telling factor that this was a Japanese cafe was the hiragana/katakana on the menu.
The wifi is also terrible. The server did apologize for the poor wifi beforehand, but since many people also go to cafes to work or study, I felt like this was a miss (even though they explained that it was because the building is a medical building, hence they can't have their own wifi due to fear of interfering with medical equipment). The office wifi was so inadequate that my friend and I had to move to another spot shortly after we had a less-than-amazing experience from Wanoka, because we needed the wifi to work.
Also, service was slow! Or maybe I was just hangry...
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but the only thing I might be back for is a slice of the tofu cheesecake. If you're passing by, do pick up a slice of their cake or one of their desserts, but I don't recommend this spot to chill with friends.
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