Ueda has a dialect word, oidare. It is what you call people you know well, roughly meaning you lot. The name of this dish stacks two more meanings on top of that one: oishii tare, good sauce, and oikakeru tare, the sauce you chase the food with, poured on after the grilling rather than before.

Three meanings folded into one word, which is a good deal more work than most dish names are asked to do, and it holds together in all three directions.

The definition of the sauce is a single line: soy-based, with grated garlic in it. Not garlic-scented soy sauce. Closer to soy sauce with a great deal of garlic.

It began at a shop called Torisho with its first owner, Miyashita Shozo, who is said to have worked the method out in consultation with his friends rather than alone. Around sixty places in the Ueda area now use it, and no two sauces are the same. Some have been topping up the same pot since they opened. Some mix a batch each winter and let it rest. Some grate apple or other fruit in to round it off. It is poured over skewers that have already come off the charcoal, which is the opposite of how yakitori is usually finished. The instruction in the name is that the sauce comes after.