Wagamama Lemon Yuzu Muffin

Wagamama lemon yuzu muffin costs £4.50 and carries 452 kcal, the cheapest dessert on the menu and its brightest: a lemon muffin drizzled in tangy yuzu sauce, the citrus double act pulling the dessert list out of its caramel comfort zone.

Yuzu over lemon is citrus in stereo: lemon supplies the familiar sharpness, yuzu the perfumed mandarin grapefruit strangeness that makes the drizzle taste imported rather than baked in a British tray. The muffin underneath keeps its crumb loose and its manner unpretentious; the sauce is doing the passport work.

The numbers read bigger than the plate suggests: 452 kcal with 43 g of sugar, the drizzle spending like a glaze because it is one, figures worth a glance from anyone assuming muffin means modest. At £4.50 published, the page's smallest price, the how much is the muffin answer keeps it firmly in the impulse category regardless.

Its constituency is precise: the diner who finds chocolate heavy, caramel cloying and fried desserts a performance, and wanted something sharp with a coffee. The dessert list keeps exactly one seat for that person and this is it.

Daytime visits are its real home: with the coffee list beside it, the muffin turns a wagamama into the cafe it never claims to be, and the yuzu drizzle outclasses everything in the chain bakery cabinet next door. As a dessert it ends a heavy meal with the lightest touch on the page bar the affogato.

It follows the menu's richest tables as the light contrarian choice, and it moonlights at the coffee end of a daytime visit as the bake it secretly is. The green tea beside it doubles the Japanese citrus mood; the espresso argues with it productively.