Home-style ── Machi-chuka (Japanese-Chinese diner food)
Gomoku Ankake Yakisoba
Gomoku ankake yakisoba — noodles fried crisp and topped with a thick mixed-vegetable gravy
Chinese noodles are pan-fried crisp, then topped with a thick gravy of stir-fried pork, vegetables, and seafood — a dish said to share its gravy with kanton men while branching off by frying the noodles dry and crisp, a Japanese diner invention.
Lineage
What it's made of
Pan-fried noodles turn crisp and fragrant on the surface, and where the thick gravy lands, a soft hiss marks the noodles starting to go limp. Crisp patches sit alongside softened ones on the same plate, a different texture turning up bite to bite.
How it's made
Boiled noodles are pan-fried in oil to a golden crisp, while pork, shrimp, napa cabbage, and carrot are stir-fried separately and thickened into a gravy with chicken stock and soy sauce. The gravy is poured over the plated noodles, and some shops offer vinegar on the side for a change of flavor. The balance between how crisp the noodles stay and how thick the gravy runs marks each shop's own style.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that the same thickened-gravy idea behind chuka-don and kanton men was applied here to fried noodles instead of soup noodles, and that's thought to be how this dish began. No matching dish is said to exist in Guangdong, and the Japanese-diner pattern of sealing stir-fried ingredients into a gravy is thought to have branched out across different noodle textures from there.
Before you go
- Yokohama ChinatownSaid to be one of the largest Chinatowns in Japan, with more than 150 Chinese restaurants and food shops. Offerings range widely from street snacks to formal course meals.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Annin-dofuA dessert descended from Chinese medicinal cooking that uses apricot kernels. In Japan it is often made with milk and almond essence, and the Hong Kong style of fruit and jelly floating in syrup took hold at Chinese restaurants and in school lunches.
- BambanjiSteamed chicken pulled into shreds and dressed with a sauce rich in ground sesame, served cold. It is based on a Sichuan dish, and in Japan a milder, sweeter sesame sauce with cucumber and other vegetables became the norm.