Wagamama Chocolate Brownie

Wagamama chocolate brownie costs £4.90 and carries 422 kcal, the dessert list's best value and one of its four published prices: a warm brownie filled with mini chocolate chips under icing sugar, gluten free marked, and the page's most quietly capable entry.

The gluten free marking is the headline hiding in the small print: a proper fudgy brownie that coeliac diners can order at a chain, chips and all, is rarer than the menu lets on, and this one asks no allowances of anyone. The chips keep molten pockets through the warm centre, the icing sugar does its snowfall, and nothing about the plate needs explaining to a single person at the table.

The numbers behave like a brownie: 422 kcal with 37 g of sugar, honest chocolate arithmetic at half the price of the constructed desserts above it. At £4.90 it undercuts the page's standard by forty percent, which makes the how much is the brownie answer the page's best news.

Solo diners take note: this is the chocolate conviction of the smoked cake at half the money and none of the sharing pressure, the dessert for one person who wanted dessert rather than an event.

It also quietly solves the mixed dessert table: order two brownies and a scoop of the vegan ice cream for the table's centre and every diet present is covered for less than one constructed dessert. The icing sugar disappears in transit on takeaway orders, which is the only argument for eating it in.

It follows anything, pairs with the vanilla scoop trick if the kitchen obliges, and holds the children's vote unopposed once the kids menu's own brownie bite has been outgrown. Coffee beside it completes the oldest partnership in dessert.