Nabeyaki Ramen

Lift the lid of the earthen pot and steam carries up the smell of a soy broth built from old hen. The soy-based broth, with a touch of sweetness, is light yet full of depth, and the toppings are simple: hen meat, scallion, a raw egg, and sliced chikuwa. Served still over heat in the pot it was cooked in, it keeps bubbling after the first bite and never cools before the last. Crack the raw egg in and the white sets soft, adding one more layer of mellowness to the broth.

The noodles are said to be deliberately boiled a touch firm, timed for the trip to a delivery customer's door. By the time it arrives, the noodles have softened to just the right bite — a calculation that works backward from delivery time — and using a heat-retaining pot instead of a bowl is just as essential. Enamel pots were used in the dish's early days; a nearby shop later switched to earthenware, and that became the standard. Left over heat at the table, the dish keeps changing texture from the first bite to the last.

Not long after the war, a diner in Susaki, responding to delivery orders, is said to have started using a heat-retaining pot instead of a bowl out of a simple wish: to have customers eat it piping hot. The time lag built into delivery itself is thought to have called this form into being — served still boiling in an earthen pot — and boiling the noodles firm on purpose reads as a concrete answer to that same time lag. A trick built for delivery ended up defining how the dish is eaten at the counter too.