On the eighteenth of September 1957, a Chinese restaurant called Baigetsu reopened on Shizuya-dori near Otaru station, and the gomoku ankake yakisoba on its menu is usually given as the start of this. Later research found other shops serving it around 1950, so the claim is not airtight.

What is clear is when it spread. That was the late 1950s and into the 1960s. It sat well in the stomach and it warmed you in a Hokkaido winter.

At the time it was fashionable, a modern sort of lunch. The habit that formed was to shop at a department store and eat this on the way home.

The noodles are fried hard enough to set into a single mass, while keeping something of the texture of boiled noodles underneath the crust. The sauce is generous, covering them and spilling past the edge. Red pickled ginger, mustard, and vinegar come with it as a matter of course, and pouring the vinegar over partway through is standard. In 2022 it was recognized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs under its hundred-year foods scheme. The city had close to two hundred thousand people then and the central streets were busy, which is the condition this kind of dish needs. An ordinary habit of a shopping afternoon, preserved and then given a name.