VAPIANO München Theatiner Straße — Restaurant in Munich

After spending an afternoon in the great city that is München at the end of a family holiday, before flying home the next day, we were ready for an easy, familiar and straightforward meal out before snapping back to reality (it helps with the metaphorical whiplash). We could've went to the Thai place beside this Vapianos and I wish we had: we did not have a good experience here. Vapianos is renowned for it's unique take on fast food and while it doesn't do it for everyone, a good pasta or pizza is usually guaranteed. Unfortunately the service and systems in place tainted the food experience so much that even the famous food was not enjoyable. First of all, the system was different to my native London Vapianos, or different to what i remember; you order at the till and THEN they bring the food out to you, rather than you ordering at the till and then they make it fresh in front of your eyes and then you take it to a table yourself. I now have to say that they don't do a unique take on 'fast food' but instead it's a unique take on 'food'. Maybe it was the fact that our party didn't order together, but our dishes all arrived at completely different times. Seven of us hungry pale humans sat on a table, eyeing up each dish that raced past us to the other tables, whilst some other staff were walking around aimlessly checking our table number in a standoffish manner. They have to think about a better system or strategy for this. One of our party finished his pizza well before anyone else's food arrived, and that's not because he's a growing lad; eventually my dish arrived but we still had two dishes to wait on. Thankfully, for us, necessity comes before politeness so we tucked in while our food was hot but no one enjoyed the experience here. My suggestion here is that they make a note of the table number for the customers so that any orders from a certain table can all go out together. This is a simple aspect of eating out that was completely overlooked. I hope it can be improved for others. Oh and I nearly forgot! The payment system sucks, it's completely unnecessary, there's nothing wrong with just paying at the till no? Instead, EVERYONE gets given a card and your order is put on this card and you use that card to pay on your way out when you leave!? So confusing and unnecessary. If it was a standard pay at the till, then maybe food would get delivered together and on time, especially if it's one person paying for multiple people, just a thought. You can see on the staff's faces that they don't enjoy all this extra hassle either. Later our party visited McDonald's, which tells you all you need to know really. Ich glaub...

This Vapiano is centrally located in the Fünf Höfe shopping arcade area along Theatinerstraße. It is a good spot for a decent Italian lunch at reasonable prices. Opening hours are 10am to midnight daily.

This is a typical Vapiano, take your card at the cashier as you enter. Order stations are immediately upstairs and there is a large indoor seating area with tables that are well spaced out. There is also a small outdoor, rooftop seating area with room for probably 15-20 patrons. There are English menus available so no worries if you can't read or speak German.

During our lunch here had a Pesto and Spinach pizza (€9.95) that was loaded baby spinach, cherry tomatoes. padano and mozerella cheeses were fine. Overall, a better pizza than we expected and a large serving, easily enough for two people.

We also tried the Arrabbiata with tagliatelle (€7.95) that was also a generous portion of pretty good pasta. The sauce was slightly spicy and the noodles tasted just fine. Add a bit of olive oil with chili from the seating table and we both enjoyed this pasta serving.

In the end, we were both happy with our lunch at Vapiano. Not the fanciest of places in the world but when you are simply needing a decent lunch in between sightseeing endeavours, it makes for a good traveller...

An absolute disaster. I used to love Vapiano but they’ve pointlessly changed the system so that instead of queuing for pasta, you have to wait for them to bring it to you. Except they don’t know where anyone is sitting and so if they can’t find you they seem to just leave your food to get cold. An hour waiting and then finally cold pasta which I couldn’t wat. The poor waiters didn’t seem to know what they were doing, and one kindly offered to make me a new pasta, but only after he’d first offered to heat it up (no thanks when I don’t know how long it’s been there getting cold!) and his German wasn’t really good enough that I would have felt confident in knowing whether a fresh dish was being prepared. Thankfully when I left (hungry!) the guy on the door didn’t argue with me when I said I wasn’t happy to pay for the pasta. So much time wasted to sit and drink a rather expensive coke, and such a shame when Vapiano used to be so good. No reflection on the poor staff, who are obviously doing their best with a business model that simply doesn’t work. I hope they’ll revert to the old model because this is just silly and isn’t protecting anyone from Covid (everyone’s in one single queue instead waiting to pay). Until they do, I won’t be frequenting...