Nagoya-meshi

Nagoya-meshi means Nagoya food. In June 2015 Aichi Prefecture, the City of Nagoya, the Nagoya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the prefecture's tourism association and the city's convention bureau set up a council to promote it. Its list is long. Six dishes matter on a port day.

The common thread is mame miso, soybean miso. It is darker and stronger than the miso most visitors know, and it keeps its flavour when simmered. It goes on fried pork and into the noodle pot.

Hitsumabushi, in three rounds

Atsuta Horaiken opened as a restaurant in 1873 in Atsuta, a post town on the Tokaido road. Its own history tells how hitsumabushi began. The shop sent out a lot of eel and chicken on delivery, and the empty bowls kept breaking on the way back. The second-generation owner, Jinzaburo, and his head maid, O-Ume, made sturdy wooden tubs and sent several servings of eel rice in one. Diners ate the eel and left the rice, so the kitchen chopped the eel and mixed it in. The name comes from that mixing. Hitsumabushi is now Horaiken's registered trademark.

The shop gives an order for eating it. First bowl plain. Second bowl with the condiments. Third bowl with broth or tea poured over. After that, however you like.

First plain, then with condiments, then with broth. After that, however you like.

On the Jade's Tuesday call, 10 November, choose the branch with care. The Honten, the main shop at Godo-cho in Atsuta, is open on Tuesdays, with lunch to 14:00 last order. The Jingu-ten by the shrine and the Matsuzakaya-ten in Sakae are closed on Tuesdays. Only kaiseki courses take bookings, so expect a queue.

Miso-katsu

Miso-katsu is a pork cutlet with a soybean-miso sauce. The council gives two origin stories. One says customers at post-war food stalls dipped kushikatsu skewers into a pot of dote-ni, pork stewed in miso. The other credits a pre-war chef in the Tokai region. Nobody has settled it.

Yabaton was founded in 1947. It says its sauce uses its own soybean miso, aged for a year and a half. The Yabacho Honten in Osu is open 11:00–21:00 with no closing day. The branch inside JR Nagoya Station opens at 7:00.

Tebasaki

Tebasaki are fried chicken wings in a sweet, savoury sauce. Furaibo, founded in 1963, says its founder started the dish. At the time, wings were mainly used for soup. He saw piles of them at a supplier and fried them with the sauce of his main dish, a fried half chicken. Furaibo opens only from 17:00. Sekai no Yamachan's Meieki Shinkansen-guchi branch opens at 11:30, the only Yamachan confirmed open at lunch.

Kishimen and miso-nikomi

Kishimen are flat noodles, usually about 1 cm wide, eaten here since the Edo period. The broth is based on tamari soy sauce. Basic toppings are fried tofu, fish cake, greens and bonito flakes. The council lists four theories for the name and calls the mid-Edo period, after soy sauce spread, the likeliest date. Miya Kishimen has a shop inside the Atsuta Jingu grounds.

Miso-nikomi udon is thick udon simmered in soybean-miso broth in a single clay pot. Yamamotoya Sohonke was founded in Osu in 1925. It makes its noodles from flour and water only, with no salt, so they can go raw into the broth. The pot is Shigaraki ware, and the lid has no steam hole because it doubles as a small plate. The Honke in Sakae is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The Towers branch at Nagoya Station is open 11:00–23:00.

The morning service

Order a coffee in the morning and toast and a boiled egg arrive free. This is moningu, the morning service. The council says it is common across Aichi and that two towns claim to have begun it: Ichinomiya, for textile workers, and Toyohashi, for workers coming off night shifts. It treats both as theories.

Ogura toast is buttered toast with sweet red bean paste. The council credits a cafe in Sakae, Matsuba, in the late Taisho period; its owner is said to have seen students dipping toast into red-bean soup. Komeda's Coffee runs its morning service from opening to 11:00 every day, and one of the free choices is its ogura-an.