Jamie Henderson of Wagamama on Food Innovation and Team Culture with Kieron Bailey

Watermelon tuna and vegan squid made from king oyster mushrooms. Jamie Henderson is a food development chef at Wagamama, eighteen years in hospitality and sixteen of them with the same brand. He started as a line chef in Leicester at eighteen looking for summer work. Hosted by Kieron Bailey.

Key takeaways

• Sixteen years at one brand is the interesting part. He explains what kept it interesting, and it is not the money.
• Whole vegetables over processed vegan protein. The innovation team’s deliberate position, and where the watermelon tuna and mushroom squid come from.
• Kaizen as a mentoring method. Getting better slowly every day, applied to teenagers on a cook line.
• Walking past a mistake endorses it. His clearest line on standards, and it applies well outside a kitchen.
• Open kitchens change behaviour. So does family meal, which he treats as culture infrastructure rather than a perk.
• The fresh-to-order model has to be explained to customers. No starters, sides cooked fresh, dishes arriving when they are ready.

On this page

• From line chef in Leicester to the innovation team
• Whole vegetables, watermelon tuna and mushroom squid
• Kaizen, family meal and the cook line
• Service model and kitchen technology
• What keeps him there
• People, ideas and sources mentioned
• Questions this episode answers
• Go deeper

From line chef in Leicester to the innovation team

Jamie walked into Wagamama High Cross in Leicester straight out of college at eighteen, looking for summer work. He fell for fresh Pan-Asian cooking and stayed. Sixteen years later he is part of the food innovation team in London, having opened restaurants in New York and Boston along the way.

He names the people who made it stick, including a character he calls Tom on Teppan. That is worth noting if you run kitchens. People stay for people.

Whole vegetables, watermelon tuna and mushroom squid

Wagamama’s development team has won awards and the position underneath the work is clear: whole vegetables rather than processed vegan proteins. Not for marketing reasons. Because a vegetable you can recognise behaves better on a plate than a manufactured substitute.

Two results people remember. Watermelon treated to eat like tuna. King oyster mushrooms turned into vegan squid. Both come out of research trips to Asia with Steve Mangleshot, which also fed a cookbook.

Kaizen, family meal and the cook line

If you walk past them and that’s wrong, you’re basically saying, yeah, that’s fine then, just keep doing it.

— Jamie Henderson

That is the standards argument in one sentence and it transfers to any team. The standard is not what you wrote down. It is what you walk past.

His mentoring approach is Kaizen: better slowly, every day. With young chefs that is a kinder and more durable model than the shouting the industry is famous for, and it works because the feedback arrives in real time rather than at a review.

Everyone knows they’re in the same boat together and will help each other to get through it.

— Jamie Henderson

Open kitchens and family meal do the rest of the work. A team that eats together and is watched while it cooks behaves differently from one that does neither.

Service model and kitchen technology

Wagamama’s service model is unusual and it needs explaining to guests. No starters. Sides cooked fresh. Dishes land when they are ready rather than together. Managing that expectation is a real operational task, not a footnote.

• KDS, the kitchen display system, and what it changed about pace and accuracy.
• Self-filtering fryers, a sustainability move that also cuts labour.
• Supplier relationships, which he rates as highly as any piece of equipment.

What keeps him there

Sixteen years with one brand invites the obvious question. His answer is that the challenge kept changing: new countries, new menus, new formats. The brand stayed the same and the job did not.

Wagamama now runs around 165 restaurants globally and continues to expand in the US, across New York, Boston, Texas and Atlanta. And yes, he talks about music in the kitchen. He is currently on Messy in Heaven.

People, ideas and sources mentioned

Questions this episode answers

• How do you build a career inside one restaurant brand?
• What is food innovation actually like as a job?
• Why use whole vegetables instead of processed vegan protein?
• How do you mentor young chefs without shouting?
• How do you maintain standards on a busy cook line?
• What does a kitchen display system change?
• Why does Wagamama serve dishes as they are ready?

Go deeper

Every link above goes somewhere different. These are the ones not already mentioned above.

• Jim Harris on restaurant technology and AI, the supplier-side view of the same kit.
• Susan Tung on systems and personnel, on what happens to standards when nobody is watching.

Find Jamie Henderson

He is part of the food innovation team at Wagamama in London. The host, Kieron Bailey, is on Instagram as @theboybaileyspeaks.

Cite this episode

Henderson, Jamie. Interviewed by Kieron Bailey. “Food Innovation and Team Culture.” Restaurant Talk by Save Fry Oil, 2025. https://restaurant-talk-by-save-fry-oil.castos.com/episodes/jamie-henderson-of-wagamama-on-food-innovation-and-t4cp