Tsukemen GACHI / つけめん ガチ

2-Chome Tsukemen GACHI / 二丁目つけめん ガチ

Since I moved to Shinjuku, I've seen this ramen place several times but finally we went to try.

Even thought this is a ramen place, it looks like a cool bar from outside.

I'm not big fan of Tsukemen, which is "dipping ramen" and noodle and soup are served separately.

And Tsukemen tends to come with thick and oily soup, I can't eat the whole bowl...

Tsukemen GACHI opened on September 30, 2011 in Shinjuku Nichome, where is famous for gay bars and restaurants.

In the morning, not much people are there; only saw some people are going home.

But at night, it looks busy and many guys are on the street, in bars and restaurants, including females.

After opening a heavy and hard to close door, there's a ticket machine and I chose 極鶏らーめん (GACHI Tori Ramen) ---- "極" is read as "GACHI" here as same as this eat-in's name.

* "Tori" is chicken in English.
750 JPY

I realized that they have reduced varieties since last time I walked pass by.

Not sure why but it seemed there're only half kinds left now.

We went there Saturday night around 8PM and there're 3 couples (=total 6 people and 5 of them were guys) at the counter, 2 guys at a table, and 2 individuals.

We sat at a table for 4 people as it's vacant.

The interior was like a cafe/bar and it was wooden floor, which was a little bit sticky and slippy due to some oils.

On the wall, there're a lot of menus and information of this shop and foods.

This notice below, it says they'd reheat the soup, thicken or weaken the soup, and can adjust the way to cook noodle as we wish on the left side underneath the yellow alert mark.

And on the right side, they're announcing they've got a twitter account and they'd like us to follow so that they can provide limited flavor noodles and new bowls.

And a box of tissue was set on the table, nice.

Also, there's another paper on the wall.

It was extra topping, for example, egg, naganegi-onions, seaweed, fried mianma (bamboo shoot), rice, and another round (extra noodle, 替え玉) are 100 JPY and fried chicken is 200 JPY. 

And there's a big poster on the wall.

GACHI IS IT

Water is self-service and water machine is located the farthest wall from the entrance.

We've waited for maybe 10 minutes or less and got our bowls.

This is my GACHI Tori Ramen.

A lot of bonito flakes over the noodle and it had really strong flavor.

Interestingly, they use chicken broth and the char siu was chicken instead of pork, with black pepper.

The chicken char siu was thigh meat but as it's seasoned well, I didn't smell much odor.
I smelled like citrus and first I thought they sprinkled a Yuzu pepper, but the brownish oil was the one had the fragrance and it was Japanese pepper oil according to some other reviews.

Red topping was their original Ume Soboro, ground meat seasoned with preserved plum.

Noodle was skinny and similar to Tonkotsu ramen in Hakata area, which is pork broth.

Soup was thicker than regular chicken stock ramens I've tried before and the thin noodle caught the thick soup really well.

So I could see why they use thinner noodle than other chicken ramen places.

This is one of the toppings, bamboo shoot.

It was my first time to see a white, not seasoned, and long bamboo shoot.

Usually it's brown and shorter (about 1/3 of the length) besides it has salty flavor.

As it's chicken soup, it wasn't heavy at all and it was tasty of course.

I might try their Tsukemen as it's the most popular bowl next time, but still I'm not sure if I'd like any of those type of ramen.

It was pretty clean and the BGM was jazz.

After we left, a group of 5-6 people went in, so we're pretty lucky to get a table as soon as we went there.

2-Chome Tsukemen GACHI / 二丁目つけめん ガチ

1F, Kuroiwa bldg.

2-17-10, Shinjuku,

Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

東京都新宿区新宿2-17-10　黒岩ビル1F

Open everyday: 11:00AM - 11:00PM

無休