In 1963 a man named Otsubo Kenko opened a shop called Furaibo in the Atsuta ward of Nagoya. One day an ordering error meant the young chickens he used for a dish called Tarzan-yaki did not arrive.

Looking around his supplier's cold store for something else to use, he saw chicken wings sitting there. He wondered what would happen if he put the Tarzan-yaki sauce onto those instead. What happened is that the city has been eating them continuously ever since, in enormous quantities.

So the most famous chicken dish in Nagoya exists because somebody miscounted an order one week. It could easily have gone the other way. The frying is done in two stages: first at 160 degrees, then out of the oil, then back in at 190. That produces a crisp exterior with the meat inside still soft, and it is now standard practice across the city.

The sauce is mirin, soy sauce, sliced garlic, and three further seasonings, blended and then aged for about a month. It is brushed onto the wings as they come out of the fryer, and pepper and sesame go over the top. At the shop itself the left and right wings are separated out and arranged in a fan on the plate, meat side up, skin side down.