Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2

Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 … As of June 2023, there are said to be 44 Jiro ramen shops across Japan, led by the Mita Main Branch (check Wikipedia for the latest number of shops), and it is renowned as one of the most popular Jiro shops in Japan. Although it is a Jiro-style ramen restaurant where people have different likes and dislikes, I visited this restaurant, which has been selected as one of the 100 best ramen restaurants in the past, on a weekend with my companion who was making her Jiro debut.

We left home aiming to arrive 30 minutes before opening time and arrived at the restaurant at the scheduled time. But what we saw there was not at all what we had planned…

Half an hour before opening time, there are already more than 20 customers ahead of you… Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2: How to queue and rules for buying meal tickets you should know when using the restaurant.

This is because when I arrived at Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 at around 10:30 in the morning, there were already 25 customers lined up at the shop, counting from the front. I was prepared for a bit of a queue because it is one of the most popular Jiro restaurants, but to be honest, I didn’t expect the queue to be this long 30 minutes before opening. After this, customers came one after another as a matter of course, and there were probably less than 50 people in the queue when the restaurant opened. Naturally, we didn’t get the first round on this day, and we were shown to our seats after a 30-minute wait from the opening.

Let’s start by explaining how to queue at Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yane Kaido Branch 2. With the entrance to the restaurant as the head of the queue, line up as indicated by the red arrow in the diagram above. It is a rule at the restaurant to buy a meal ticket before queuing, so when you arrive at the restaurant, go inside first and get a meal ticket from the ticket vending machine on the left hand side of the entrance.

The ticket machine inside the restaurant looks like this. At a quick glance, you get the impression that the menu is quite extensive, starting with Jiro’s default small ramen. However, even here…

These rules are especially important to keep in mind beforehand, especially if you are new to Jiro-style restaurants. Well, these rules are only to “prevent leftovers”. If you can finish your meal, you can order with confidence.

Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2, one of the most popular Jiro restaurants in Japan, has discovered a Tsukemen menu! What did you think when you actually tried the first ever Jiro-style tsukemen in Ohbori’s history?

What I ordered at Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 this time was tsukemen (priced at 1,050 yen including tax), which I found on the ticket machine and decided on immediately. After placing the ticket on the counter, I waited for about 10 minutes, and after the customary ritual of making the call (the Ramen Jiro Kyoto branch article explains in detail how to make the call), the noodles and dipping sauce arrived in front of me…

As this was my Jiro-style Tsukemen debut, I decided to call it ‘as is’. This is the default form of Jiro-style tsukemen… Well, when the noodles and soup are separate, the visual impact is very different. After all, if it’s Jiro, you need something that rises from the edge of the bowl when you look at it from the side… Well, that’s something you’ll have to deal with in the future by calling for more Yasaimashi, etc.

That aside, let’s start with the dipping sauce… It had a very strong Kaeshi taste among the Jiro-style soups I’ve eaten so far, and I felt that the salt content was a bit harsh for Kansai people who are used to a lighter flavour (on the other hand, it may be perfect for people from Kanto). On the other hand, the pork flavour was quite subdued for a Jiro, and to be honest, I felt quite uncomfortable with it. Well, it wasn’t so much that it was ‘bad’, but… it may have been because the soup hadn’t been fully cooked just after the restaurant opened.

The noodles are a bit like what you’d expect from Jiro, but just like with the tsukemen at other restaurants, I first slurped down a stick of the noodles alone. The noodles are hard-boiled to the point where they feel tough and tough, and as far as noodles are concerned, they are exactly like Jiro’s! I can see why. On the other hand, although of course this is not what I was looking for in Jiro, I could hardly smell the aroma of wheat like I do when I eat tsukemen at other restaurants. I had been eating it without thinking about it, but to be made aware in this way of how much effort other shops offering tsukemen put into selecting the wheat…

Next, dip these noodles in the dipping sauce… I can’t get enough of the crunchy texture, which I haven’t had in a long time. The last time I ate at Ramen Jiro Sapporo, my teeth hurt so much that I didn’t have time to enjoy this texture. Perhaps it was because I was so happy that I ate it all at once, but the noodles ran out more quickly than I expected. I heard that a small ramen contains about 350 g of noodles, but when I finished eating it, I felt like, “What?” I felt like, “What? It was overwhelmingly harder on my stomach after the meal than the Kanda Jimbocho branch with less noodles.

Now, the chashu ‘pork’, which cannot be avoided when talking about Ramen Jiro, was by default two pieces about 1 cm thick. The meat is mostly lean, and when you chew it, you can feel the elasticity of the meat and enjoy the texture of a pork steak. Personally, I love this pork. However, I felt that the additional toppings were overpriced (variable price system, 250 yen per piece at the time of my visit), so I’m not sure if I’ll add them next time I have the chance to visit the restaurant…

I went to Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 Tsukemen like this, with quite high expectations as it is one of the most popular restaurants in Jiro, but it was personally disappointing in the sense that I couldn’t feel the violent pork flavour. If it had been later in the day, when the soup was cooked thoroughly, rather than just after opening, my impression of the flavour might have been different, though…

There were also a few things that bothered me about the behaviour of some of the waiters. For example, they touched boiled noodles with the same hand that touched the cloth used to wipe the table, or silently handed meal tickets to customers behind the counter while they were eating… This may be acceptable because the restaurant is called ‘Jiro’, but I didn’t feel good watching it. I didn’t feel the ‘fear’ that is often said of Jiro-style ramen restaurants, but including that part of the customer service, my impression this time is that it’s a bit disappointing…

This is a petit Jiro ordered by my companion, who is making her Jiro debut. Like my tsukemen, the call was “as is”. The amount of noodles in this petit Jiro is about 200g, which is more than the volume of a large bowl of ordinary ramen.

A 200 g serving of noodles is roughly equivalent to a “small ramen with less noodles” in the world of Jiro. This means that if you can’t finish this amount of noodles, you may find it difficult to eat at other Jiro-inspired restaurants.

Conversely, Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2, which offers this petit Jiro and women-only potch on its regular menu, is definitely a Jiro beginner-friendly restaurant. For those who are thinking of making their Jiro debut in the future, we can recommend trying petit Jiro at this restaurant.

Example menu items at Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 (prices include tax)

• Small ramen 900 yen
• Large ramen (450 g of noodles): 1 000 yen
• Petit Jiro 880 yen
• Potch (Petit Jiro with less noodles) 750 yen
• Large tsukemono 1150 yen
• Dokuro (without soup) 1000 yen
• Curry Ninjane: 1,050 yen

There are also several other items available to change the taste, such as raw egg and ginger.

There are also two take-out menus… Access to Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 is an 11-minute walk from the nearest station, Keio Horinouchi Station on the Keio Dentetsu Sagamihara Line.

Ramen Jiro Hachioji Yaen Kaido Branch 2 also offers ramen to-go. There are two take-out menus: ‘Nabe Jiro’, where you fill your own pot with ramen soup and take it home for 1,800 yen for two servings; and ‘Take Out’, where you take home the soup in a vacuum pack for 2,200 yen for two servings. The ‘take-out’ option is more expensive, but unlike Nabejiro, it has the big advantage that you don’t have to queue… and you don’t have to waste time standing in line! If you’re not a fan of this, you should definitely make use of these take-away menus as well.

Now, here are the shop details. See shop data here…

P.S. If you are looking for delicious ramen in Tokyo, please stop by this article…