Taipien

Taipien is a bowl of clear chicken and pork broth with mung bean vermicelli in it, topped with stir-fried pork, cabbage, carrot, wood ear, prawn and squid, and a deep-fried boiled egg. The noodles are glass noodles, so it eats light, and Kumamoto people treat it as the healthy option — it is served in school lunches here and nowhere else in Japan.

It came from Fujian with Chinese cooks who settled in Kumamoto in the Meiji period, where the original used duck egg and a different noodle. The local version replaced both, and the dish rooted here so completely that it is now a Kumamoto speciality that barely exists elsewhere in the country. Chinese restaurants across the city serve it, and so do coffee shops and canteens.