Wagamama Wok-fried Greens

Wagamama wok fried greens cost £6.60 and carry 163 kcal, tenderstem and bok choi through a garlic soy glaze, the lightest cooked dish in the entire building and the side that answers the menu's only real absence: something green, hot and unfried.

The wok does in ninety seconds what steaming never manages, blistering the greens' edges while the stems keep their snap, and the garlic soy glaze clings where water would slide off. The result eats savoury enough to hold its own on a table of glazes and broths, which is the whole trick; virtuous sides fail when they taste like penance, and this one tastes like cooking.

The numbers are the page's cleanest sweep: 163 kcal for a proper bowlful, vegan and gluten free marked both, modest salt and the fibre load the rest of the order skipped. Dietitians reviewing this menu would circle this plate first, and the kitchen would not argue.

At £6.60 published, the how much are the greens question lands at the price of a London coffee for the menu's most defensible order, which is the argument for making it a standing side the way regulars quietly do.

They also earn a place in the takeaway calculus: greens travel better than anything fried and revive in a hot pan in sixty seconds, so home orders that skip them are choosing soggier balance from worse sources. One bowl folded through leftover rice the next day is a fried rice starter kit in disguise.

It balances everything: under a katsu it is the vegetable the plate forgot, beside a buldak it is the pause between rounds, across a kids table it is the greens negotiation already won. The only order it duplicates is the kare burosu's own vegetables, and even there the garlic argues its case.