A place called Yasube put a stall out in 1970. It still stands in a parking lot, working from seven in the evening until three in the morning.

The wrappers are thin and the dumplings are one bite each. Nothing is made in advance. An order comes in, and a cook wraps them one at a time and puts them on the heat, which means you wait. What arrives is crisp on the outside, heavy on vegetables inside, and full of liquid, and the wrapper is about half the thickness of an ordinary one.

Kochi drinks. These were what people ate at the end of a night out, and from there they spread to people who were not drinking at all, to children and to women, and at some point the dumplings of this prefecture simply became known as yatai gyoza, stall dumplings, after the place they were sold rather than anything about the recipe.

There is a branch inside Hirome Market now, indoors, with seats. The stall still has the queue. People here are said to dislike queuing, and they queue for this every night, standing outside in the dark waiting for something small. I think the waiting is part of the dish and not an inconvenience attached to it. It is not priced into anything.