The roots are not cut off. The soil is washed away and the white roots go into the pot still attached, which is the part most kitchens throw out. They are also the part people here come for. Bite into one and the smell is stronger than anything in the leaf.

The stock is chicken or duck, seasoned with soy sauce, mirin and sake. Leek, burdock, tofu and fried tofu often go in as well. When it comes to the boil the seri goes in, whole bunches at a time, pushed under with chopsticks. It is not cooked for long. You lift it out while it still snaps.

Seri is one of the seven herbs of spring, and yet this is a winter dish; the shops here put it on when the weather turns. Miyagi grows a great deal of the plant, and around Natori there are records of cultivation going back to the early Edo period. The pot itself, though, is not old at all. Izakaya in Sendai are said to have started serving it around 2004.

It spread after the earthquake, in the years when the region was rebuilding and looking for things to be known for. So the only genuinely old element is the decision to eat the root, and everything else — the duck, the pot, the reputation, the queue outside in February — was assembled within living memory. Nobody in Sendai finds that embarrassing.