Wagamama Buldak Bibimbap

Wagamama buldak bibimbap costs £19.50 and carries 1012 kcal, the full meal of the Samyang collaboration and the most Korean dish the chain has ever served. Kimchee fried rice under beef brisket, pickled red cabbage, red pepper, baby corn, green beans, pea shoots and a fried egg, with the buldak sauce running the show.

Bibimbap means mixed rice, and the format is the point: ingredients arrive arranged in their zones, the egg crowning the middle, and the eater stirs everything together at the table until the yolk, sauce and kimchee fried rice become one hot, coated whole. That mixing is not optional here; an unmixed bibimbap is an unfinished dish.

Wagamama's version runs the buldak heat through kimchee fried rice rather than plain, doubling the Korean credentials, and the slow cooked brisket gives it a depth the wings never claim. At 1012 kcal with 39 g of protein it is a complete meal by any arithmetic, and the salt at 6.1 g crosses the NHS full day line, a number worth planning around rather than discovering.

Heat runs a step below the wings, the rice and egg diluting what the glaze concentrates, which makes this the approachable half of the collaboration: genuinely hot, but a meal first and a challenge second. The price at £19.50 is published, top of the collaboration and premium territory generally.

The how much is the buldak bibimbap conversation ends against the grilled duck donburi comparison, same money, and the choice is heat plus Korea against richness plus size. Nothing should accompany it except something cold: the spicy smashed cucumber if anything, and the peach iced tea by standing order.