“The old man bit some shinachiku root and chewed it awhile. Then he took some noodles. Still chewing noodles, he took some more shinachiku. Then he sipped some soup. Three times. He sat up, sighed, picked up one slice of pork-as if making a major decision in life-and lightly tapped it on the side of the bowl.”

‘Tampopo’, directed by Juzo Itami in 1985, is a Japanese comedy drama starring Tsutomu Yamazaki and Nobuko Miyamoto. Miyamoto plays Tampopo, a noodle chef in a run-down diner who encounters a trucker called Gorō, played by Yamazaki. Gorō agrees to take Tampopo on as a protégé, working with her to improve her noodles and business skills and gathering a team of experts and helpers. Meanwhile, Tampopo’s journey to noodle perfection is told in parallel with a series of mini-stories combining food with sex. It’s a colourful and rich movie, styled as a ‘ramen Western’, a Japanese version of the spaghetti Westerns of Italy. As such, Itami uses the tropes and imagery of the Western genre to add ‘flavour’ to his story, but combines it with a preoccupation with food, food ritual and sex. By the end of the movie you’re either turned on or hungry or both, and somehow the director manages to convey everything without jarring. Itami also uses his film as a platform to dissect some social conventions in Japanese society, so the film is as much concerned with the nature of family and of class as it is with the perfect recipe for ramen soup.

Would I recommend it? Yes – it’s a film that is worth watching before dinner. Watch in a double bill with ‘Babette’s Feast’ for the perfect appetiser.