What we inherit are people's hearts and the noren;
what we create is a bowl both nostalgic and new.

Kichijoji, Tokyo, 1956. Kazue Takeishi, the founder, who had made her way from Wakayama with her daughters, stood on Nakamichi Street while it was still an unpaved road (she had first arrived here in 1954). Taking over a soba shop that had been run there before her, she renamed it "Nakamichi" and hung up the noren of a small Chinese-style eatery. Everything began here.

Steam and the scent of soy sauce on a dirt road, neighbors slipping under the noren. One of her daughters, Mitsuko — later the second generation — stood behind the counter after school while still in her teens. As the postwar boom arrived and the town grew lively, the eatery came to bustle with set meals, and then with regulars sharing a drink. Changing with the times, the shop never stopped serving its bowls.

That warmth crossed the ocean to Montreal — and now returns to Kichijoji. Seventy years on from the founding, it is still being passed down.