Wagamama Katsu Pickles

Wagamama katsu pickles cost £1.20 and carry 5 kcal, the smallest number on the entire menu attached to one of its most useful pots. These are the sharp pickled vegetables that arrive beside every katsu curry, sold separately for the tables that know one portion was never enough.

Their job is chemistry: fried crumb and coconut curry sauce coat the palate, and the pickle's vinegar sharpness strips it clean between forkfuls, which is why the katsu plate has shipped with them since the dish existed. Bought as an extra pot they upgrade anything rich, the fried chicken trio, the bao pairs, the donburi bowls, for less than the price of a chocolate coin.

The numbers barely deserve the word: 5 kcal with fractions of a gram in every column, the closest the menu comes to a free action. Vegan marked, and at £1.20 the joint cheapest item wagamama sells, which settles the how much are the pickles question with the menu's best answer.

The pot's real audience is the regular who has noticed the pickle ration on the katsu plate running out before the sauce does, an imbalance one extra pot corrects permanently. Delivery orders benefit even more, since pickles travel perfectly while crumb softens.

Order them wherever something fried or glazed is landing, and consider two pots for a table of katsu plates. Beside the hot katsu curry they are close to obligatory; the extra heat needs the extra relief.