Wagamama Kimchee

Wagamama kimchee costs £1.20 and carries 11 kcal, spicy fermented cabbage and radish with garlic, sold in the side pot that half the menu quietly assumes you have. Vegan marked, which genuine kimchee often is not, the traditional fermented seafood set aside for this build.

Kimchee is Korea's foundational ferment and the menu's sour conscience: the donburi bowls plate it as standard, the brisket gyoza wrap it in dumplings, the buldak bibimbap fries rice in it, and this pot lets every other dish borrow the same correction. Its lactic sourness and chilli warmth cut fat and sweetness the way vinegar pickles cut fried crumb, with fermentation's depth underneath.

The numbers stay out of the way: 11 kcal a pot, a single gram of salt, essentially nothing anywhere else, the second lightest thing on the menu after its pickle neighbour. At £1.20 the how much question joins the extras list's single answer.

The vegan marking earns a sentence: traditional kimchee ferments with fish sauce or salted shrimp, so wagamama's plant build is a deliberate choice that opens the pot to every diet in the building, and to the vegan bowls that want its sourness most.

Order it beside anything glazed, teriyaki plates above all, and against the biggest bowls as the palate's reset button. The tables that know add it to ramen directly, where it seasons the broth's second half into a different soup.