In 2001 a shop called Kisaku opened in Naka ward, Hiroshima. It was a ramen shop, customers did not come, and it was close to failing.

Then the owner attended a cooking class where a Chinese student was teaching how to make dry dandan noodles. What he ate there hit him hard enough that he went to Sichuan and worked his way through the dandan noodles of the region, eating and studying. He came back and turned the shop over to that dish alone.

What he arrived at leaves out the sesame paste that dandan noodles normally depend on entirely.

The heat comes from huajiao rather than Japanese sansho: twice the pungency, and a high aroma that goes up the back of the nose. There is one rule, and it is not optional. Before eating, you mix the bowl twenty or thirty times, past the point where it feels excessive. The practice of finishing with rice tipped into the remaining sauce was started by customers, not by the shop. From around 2010 another shop, Kunimatsu, drove a second wave by publishing its recipe openly, and new shops opened on the strength of it until Hiroshima was a town of dry dandan noodles. Nothing about this bowl begins until you have stirred it.