Ramen Jiro/Hachiojiラーメン二郎/八王子野猿街道店2

Wow! すごい！This was the 20th Ramen Jiro I've been to (yes I have a lot of back reviews to put up) and it ranks as one of the best of them, if not the best. Out back there was a row of 12 or 13 old Mini Coopers in the parking lot, some looked like they ran, some didn't (yes this one has a parking lot with special Jiro-labeled spaces). Got there around 12:15 after shopping at the Machida City Costco with my friends from work Tami and Claudio. The place is one of the largest Jiro shops I've been to, very clean and roomy, new countertops, and faux brick wallpaper almost like a Shoney's Breakfast Bar or an Arby's back home in NJ. Small TV on the wall and the requisite pictures of the employees with the staff from 三田本店. Cold water and ice, tissues, all of the accoutrements were there. Only had to wait about 15 minutes, during this time we played a game of musical chairs that took us from one end of the room to another in the waiting queue, which was spread amoungst two areas. We were seated at a table and about 5 minutes later they brought the bowls out. The shou（小）tsukemen was 300g of men and definitely a very large volume, not quite the equivalent of a dai at other shops but bigger than the normal shou. Glad I didn't get the dai, which they had on the machine for both ramen and tsukemen. If you just want a normal-size portion or aren't really hungry then your best bet might be the 180g pucchi Jiro (プチ二郎). Yasai was about evenly balanced between moyashi and cabbage. The soup was quite good but had no koshio (pepper) taste in it, but it also had no huge chunks of fat floating around either. When they are able to achieve the base Jiro taste without loading the soup up with fat chunks, probably via continual fine straining, that's a good thing. The men were chewy and katame, but didn't have the hard part in the center, somehow they were uniformly underdone. The buta was the brightest spot - large pieces as you can see in the picture which were perfectly done. Prices were a little bit higher than the average Jiro but I was happy to pay. Barely finished it all. This shop definitely adds to the Hachioji area's reputation as one of Tokyo's ramen centers.

ramentokyo.com Ramen Jiro Information Page
Pictures
More Pictures+Address
Google Map