Hiroshima soupless dandan noodles Period BOrigin theory BVerified

What the dish is

As the name says, these dandan noodles come with no soup. Boiled noodles are tossed directly in a sauce rather than served in broth. What defines the Hiroshima version is that it leaves out sesame paste. Sichuan dandan noodles (its parent dish) and the postwar Japanese version reworked with soup both build on the richness of sesame paste, but the Hiroshima style puts something else at the center: the tingling ma of blended Sichuan pepper, the heat of chili oil, and a stock drawn from chicken and dried sardines. A generous heap of chopped local Kannon leek goes on top, and the eater mixes noodles and sauce thoroughly before slurping them up.

Why it took hold where it did

None of the ingredients is unusual. Wheat noodles and ground pork have long been on hand in Japan, and the Sichuan pepper and the chili in the chili oil were already the everyday materials of the parent Sichuan dandan noodles. What set the Hiroshima version apart as a dish of its own was a flavor design that dropped the sesame paste and built on the tingle of Sichuan pepper tossed through the noodles, and the story of the place where a single noodle shop in central Hiroshima created it and raised it.

Kisaku's owner, Hattori Koichi, was asked by a Chinese exchange student he knew for noodles to serve at a cooking class showcasing the food of her home region. That request sent him to Sichuan to study the local dandan noodles first-hand. He reworked what he brought back to suit his own shop, and in January 2001 he began serving it as a new menu item. This is where Hiroshima's soupless dandan noodles begin.

Origin claims for Hiroshima specialties often dissolve into a fog of ''no one really knows who was first.'' Soupless dandan noodles are a rare case where that fog lifts. The parent dish, dandan noodles, rose out of humble street peddling in late-Qing Sichuan, a dish steeped in oral tradition whose origin tales split into competing versions. The Hiroshima version is the opposite: its originating shop and year can be named from near-primary records.

The starting point is January 2001, at the ramen shop Kisaku in central Hiroshima (opened 1999, owner Hattori Koichi). A personal connection, a Chinese exchange student's cooking class, sent the owner to study in Sichuan, and out of it came a sesame-paste-free dish built on Sichuan pepper. An article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a press release from Hiroshima Prefecture, and the prefecture's official tourism guide all name Kisaku as the originator, so the core of the origin is well attested.

Becoming recognized as a ''Hiroshima specialty'' in its own right took a second stage. In 2009 a later shop, Kunimatsu, released its recipe free of charge, and specialist shops began appearing one after another; in 2012 King-ken joined, and Kisaku, Kunimatsu, and King-ken came to be called the ''big three.'' King-ken's move into Tokyo in 2015 and a feature in the April 2018 issue of the magazine dancyu carried the name nationwide, until specialist shops in the prefecture numbered more than twenty-five and shops serving it more than two hundred. The origin was one shop's idea, but the rise to a local specialty was the product of this second wave of expansion. That two-part arc is the making of this dish.