What's the food culture in Yokohama?

Start with the ramen, because Yokohama invented a whole school of it. Yoshimuraya opened in 1974 and still runs a ticket-machine shop a few minutes' walk from the west exit of Yokohama Station. The bowl is iekei style: a tonkotsu-shoyu broth under a slick of chicken fat, thick straight noodles, spinach, three sheets of nori and a slice of smoked chashu. At the counter you set noodle firmness, fat level and salt strength, and "katame, koime" gets you firm noodles and a stronger broth. The pork-bone smell reaches the pavement before you see the shop. At 12:30 the queue can run 30 minutes, so go at 11:00 or after 14:00. Dozens of chains across Tokyo borrow the iekei name and they're fine, but the Kanagawa originals pour a smokier, saltier bowl. Expect roughly 900 to 1,100 yen a bowl, about $6 to $7 at 157.59 yen to the dollar.

Yokohama Chinatown is where most visitors eat badly. Touts along Chukagai-Odori hand out laminated cards for 90-minute tabehodai buffets, typically 2,000 to 3,000 yen, and at those the xiaolongbao tend to come steamed from frozen, rubbery at the pleat. Skip every one of them. Heichinrou has been open since 1884 and does Cantonese dim sum at lunch. Otherwise, queue at Edosei for a fist-sized pork bun lifted steaming from a bamboo tower on the sidewalk. The dish to hunt down is sanmamen, a Yokohama ramen in a clear broth under a glossy, cornstarch-thickened gravy of bean sprouts, cabbage and pork, and several Chinatown kitchens claim to have invented it. The gravy holds its heat so well that the first slurp can scald the roof of your mouth. Chinatown's takeout windows are licensed and turn over fast, so the stalls with food steaming in plain view are a safe bet.

Yokohama's other cuisine is yoshoku, the Western food Japan picked up through this port after it opened in 1859. The Hotel New Grand opened on Yamashita Park in 1927, and its kitchen claims spaghetti Napolitan, seafood doria and pudding a la mode. The New Grand cooks its Napolitan in tomato sauce rather than ketchup, and it costs more than a ramen lunch. For the ketchup version, go to Center Grill in Noge, which has been running since 1946; there the thick spaghetti is boiled, rested, then fried in the pan until the edges catch and go sticky. Then there's Kiyoken shiumai, small pork dumplings made with dried scallop and built to taste good cold. Buy the Shiumai Bento at a Yokohama Station kiosk for around 1,000 yen and eat it on the train, where the rice is pressed firm enough to cut into squares with chopsticks.

Evenings belong to Noge, a grid of lanes on the opposite side of Sakuragicho Station from Minato Mirai. Roughly 600 bars and izakaya fill a few blocks, many of them eight-seat counters with handwritten menus in Japanese. You can point at the next table's plate or ask for the osusume board, which lists what the kitchen recommends that day. The usual order is grilled offal skewers, a plate of sashimi and a draft Kirin at 500 to 700 yen. Kirin grew out of the Spring Valley Brewery, founded in Yamate in 1870, and its Yokohama brewery in Namamugi still runs tours. On a late-September night like tonight, 22°C, overcast and humid, the charcoal smoke hangs low over the lanes. The trade-off comes at the top end: many Minato Mirai and Kannai dining rooms take bookings through TableCheck or a hotel concierge rather than an English phone line, so book those a week ahead.