Wagamama Kids Yasai Cha Han

Wagamama kids yasai cha han costs £4.90 and carries 402 kcal, which makes it the cheapest cooked main anywhere on the wagamama kids menu. The bowl is stir fried white rice with tofu, egg, carrots, mangetout and sweetcorn, all coated in sweet amai sauce. Cha han is simply Japanese fried rice, and this is the children's version of the dish the chain serves adults, scaled down in portion and stripped of anything hot.

Parents get an easy sell here. The amai sauce is sweet and tangy rather than salty or spiced, the vegetables are cut small enough that nothing dominates a forkful, and the tofu takes on the sauce so completely that most children eat it without comment. There is no chilli in the bowl and no broth to slop, which makes it one of the tidier kids dishes to put in front of a four year old. The portion suits a primary school appetite; a hungry ten year old will clear it and still have room for a dessert from the kids list.

The kids yasai cha han calories sit slightly above the kids chicken cha han, which surprises people, since the fried tofu and egg carry more energy than the lean chicken portion does. Salt is the figure worth praising: under 1 g in the whole bowl, comfortably inside NHS guidance for even the youngest school age children, and unusually low for a restaurant kids main. Protein comes in around 14 g and sugars around 10 g, most of that from the amai sauce. The allergen sheet lists eggs and soya, wagamama marks the dish vegetarian rather than vegan because of the egg, and there is no gluten free marking, so ask your server if coeliac disease is in play, since every wagamama kitchen is shared.

On value, anyone asking how much is the kids yasai cha han will find it undercuts every other main on the children's menu, with the two katsu dishes at the top of that list costing noticeably more. It arrives as a complete meal on its own. A plate of yasai vegetable gyoza works as a shared starter that keeps the whole order meat free, and a cloudy lemonade rounds out the sweet theme the amai sauce starts.