Wagamama Ebi Katsu

Wagamama ebi katsu costs £9.20 and carries 284 kcal, panko crumbed prawns with a chilli and garlic dipping sauce, the true starter of the big flavour bites page. Ebi is Japanese for prawn, katsu the familiar crumb, and the plate is the katsu idea at its smallest and most snackable.

The engineering is the pleasure: a whole prawn inside a fried panko shell, so the crunch gives way to snap in one bite, two textures with nothing soggy between them. The chilli garlic sauce runs creamy and warm rather than hot, closer to the sauce of a prawn toast memory than a chilli bottle, and the plate disappears at a rate that embarrasses everyone involved.

At 284 kcal it is the second lightest plate on the bites page, with 9 g of protein and the modest figures of a true starter, unlike its trio and rib neighbours that moonlight as mains. This is the plate to open with when a katsu curry follows, related flavour, no double booking of heaviness.

The price at £9.20 published sits below the seafood it contains would suggest, and how much is the ebi katsu usually resolves into how many plates for the table, with one per two people the workable floor. Crustaceans lead its allergen sheet, the shared fryer footnote attached as always.

It opens for the katsu curries most naturally of all, crumb previewing crumb, and against a ramen it adds the fried note the broth lacks. Between the two seafood snacks on the page, squid brings crunch and spice, ebi brings snap and cream, and tables of four order both without agonising.