Hiroshima's broth-free dan dan noodles: flat wheat noodles under chilli oil, Sichuan pepper, minced pork and spring onion, stirred hard at the table before the first mouthful.
Where to eat it: 1 restaurant across 1 city.
Soupless dan dan noodles arrived in Hiroshima in the 2000s as a local reworking of the Sichuan dish, and the city now treats the broth-free version as its own. Shops grade both the chilli heat and the numbing Sichuan pepper separately, usually at no extra cost, and most add cumin and cinnamon to the spice blend. The convention is to stir the bowl thirty times before eating so the chilli oil coats every strand, then to order a small portion of rice at the end to finish what is left in the bowl.
Common allergens: Gluten, Soy, Sesame
Tip from the editors. Use the sediment at the bottom of the chilli oil jar, not the clear oil on top. That sediment carries the flavour.
Musashibo sells Hiroshima's broth-free tantanmen from a ticket machine in Fujimi-cho, with every heat level priced exactly the same as the rest.
Try: Shirunashi tantanmen
Tip: Buy the ticket before you sit down, and stir the bowl hard before the first mouthful or the chilli oil stays at the bottom.
More cities are in research. Want shirunashi tantanmen covered somewhere specific? Tell us where you want to eat.