Put noodles in boiling hot water
It's going to be setting. Although it was using past pretenses like "was" it isn't a backstory, it wasn't describing the characters or any event. It was only describing the room, the setting. Hope this helps :).
Answer:
Using the present tense makes the descriptions of the setting more vivid.
Explanation: the author chose the present tense to make the narrative appear more vividly by assimilating it to the here-and-now of the speech act.
