What happens at 2:40 in the morning

The doors close at three on a Saturday and the last bowl goes out at half past two. The twenty minutes in between are the only part of this job that has never once been boring.

Who is here

By 2:40 the room has sorted itself. There are the people who have been out and are winding down, who talk loudly for ten minutes and then go very quiet over the bowl. There are the people who have just finished work — kitchen crews, two nurses who come most weeks, a man who drives a night bus and always sits at stool four. And there is usually one person on their own who has clearly had a bad night and is not going to be asked about it.

Nobody is in a hurry. The twenty-minute rule is for when there is a queue, and at 2:40 there is no queue. That is the only hour of the week when the counter stops being a turnover problem and starts being a room.

What gets said

More than you would think. A counter seats people shoulder to shoulder facing a wall, which is the exact opposite of a restaurant table and turns out to be much better for talking. You are not looking at each other. You are both looking at a cook. It is closer to sitting on a wall than to having dinner.

Things we have been told at 2:40 that we were not told at 8pm: two engagements before the families knew, one resignation before the employer knew, and the result of a biopsy, by somebody who then ate a whole bowl of tonkotsu and said thank you and left.

What we do

Not much. Refill the barley tea without being asked. Do not turn the lights up. Do not start stacking stools, ever, while somebody is still eating — it is the single rudest thing a late-night room can do and it is the reason half these people stopped going somewhere else.

The music goes down, not off, at 2:45. That is the only signal we give.

And then

At three the shutter comes down and the four of us eat whatever is left — usually a tantan built from the last of the mince, split into bowls that are mostly noodles. The walk-in gets loaded, the pots go on for tomorrow, and somebody sweeps up the corn that always ends up under stool nine.

We are out by twenty past four. The barley is roasting on Monday.