Wagamama Kare Burosu Ramen

Wagamama kare burosu ramen is the vegan bowl on the wagamama ramen menu, priced at £15.20 with 706 kcal in the bowl. Silken tofu coated in shichimi sits over thick udon noodles in a curried vegetable broth with mushrooms, pea shoots, carrot and chilli. Kare means curry in Japanese, and burosu is broth, so the name says exactly what arrives: Japanese curry, loosened into a soup.

Two choices make this bowl different from every other ramen wagamama serves. First, the noodles are udon rather than ramen: fat, chewy wheat ropes that hold a thick broth far better than thin noodles would, and the curried broth here is closer to a loose Japanese curry sauce than a clear soup. Second, the tofu is silken and fried in a shichimi crust, so it shatters at the edge and stays custard soft inside; the contrast only survives a few minutes above the broth line, which is a good argument for eating the tofu first. Shichimi is the Japanese seven spice blend, usually chilli, sansho pepper, orange peel, sesame, ginger, seaweed and hemp seed, and it carries most of the bowl's heat.

The kare burosu ramen calories at 706 kcal make it a proper main rather than a light option, and the 30 g of protein is a genuinely strong figure for a plant based bowl; the tofu and the udon both contribute. Wagamama marks it vegan. The allergen sheet lists gluten, barley, wheat, mustard, sesame and soya, and the mustard and sesame both come with the territory of a curried broth and a shichimi crust. There is no gluten free version of this bowl because the udon itself is wheat.

On price, anyone asking how much is the kare burosu ramen will find £15.20 makes it the cheapest bowl on the ramen list, which is unusual: most chains price their vegan option level with the meat. It shares a menu comfortably with the yasai vegetable gyoza for an all plant table, and the oyster and shiitake mushrooms bao buns carry the same savoury depth if you are sharing. Drink wise, the tropical juice softens the shichimi heat better than anything carbonated.