It arrives in the earthenware pot it was cooked in, and the broth is still boiling. Put your mouth to it when it lands and you will burn yourself. Nobody warns you.

The reason is delivery. Just after the war a diner in Susaki found that a bowl went cold on the way to a customer, so the noodles went out in an enamelled pan instead. A different shop nearby was the first to use a clay pot. Somebody was looking for a container that held heat, and what came out of that search was a dish served at a rolling boil.

The broth is soy sauce and the bones of laying hens past their productive life — light on the tongue but deep, in a way a young bird cannot manage, and cheap in a way that mattered when this was invented. The noodles are thin and straight and cooked slightly firm. Into the pot go chicken, spring onion, a raw egg cracked in at the end, and a slice of fish sausage.

Pickled daikon comes with it, and it should be the old kind, fermented long enough to have gone properly sour rather than the sweet young sort. So the meal always arrives as a pair: one thing violently hot and one thing cold and acidic, and you alternate between them until the pot stops steaming.