Offal became common in Kesennuma around eighty years ago. The town had a meat processing plant, and pig innards were generally discarded there. People obtained them cheaply, and that is where this begins.

Domestic pork offal is marinated in a garlic and miso sauce and grilled at the table. What comes with it is the part outsiders stop at: a mound of raw cabbage, shredded fine, with Worcester sauce poured over it. Not as a garnish. As a component, eaten in the same mouthful as the meat.

There is a reason. Kesennuma is a deep-sea fishing port, and men came home from long voyages having eaten almost no vegetables for months. The shops began putting shredded cabbage alongside the grilled offal, for those customers, and it stayed. The Worcester sauce appears to have arrived by a separate route, connected to a way of dressing pork steak in Mie, which is where a number of the fishermen came from.

So the plate in front of you carries two separate pieces of information about the sea without ever mentioning it directly. The offal is on it because a slaughterhouse was throwing the stuff away. The raw cabbage is on it because of how long a distant-water boat stays out before it comes home.