The noodles are brown and no sauce has been worked into them. They are steamed twice in a seiro, and the kansui in the dough browns during the second steaming. That is all. The same process makes them thirstier, better at drawing liquid in, which turns out to be the point of the whole thing.

They are then cooked down in a seafood dashi rather than fried dry. What comes out is closer to a braise than to a stir-fry: soft, savory, tasting of dried fish, with none of the sweet-brown flavor that the word yakisoba usually promises.

The sauce is on the table. A sharp Worcester-type, and you add it yourself. Local practice, as it was explained to me, is to eat the first mouthful plain, with just the dashi, and then pour.

I have not run into that before with fried noodles. The kitchen does not finish the dish. It cooks the noodles as far as the stock will take them and then hands the plate over, and the decisive flavor arrives late, applied by the person doing the eating, in whatever quantity they happen to want that day. Most regional noodle styles are an argument about how a particular bowl ought to taste. This one quietly declines to make it.