L'atelier Motozo: Monte Bianco

Ran first to Motozo, though I got a little confused and ending up running around a couple blocks and checking the map near P. Glycine because I forgot that I had to cross Yamanote Avenue first and mistook it for the expressway after Motozo. Still, the run came out 7 km, which was what I expected, and it was (a low) 12 km/h, so faster than necessary but respectable. (My goal was 11 km/h for the trip, wanting more consistency of pace than last week.)

There, I got the Monte Bianco (モンテビアンコ; 583 yen) to compare with last time's Monte Bianco Giapponese. I choose eat in, since all the seats were free and it's cold this weekend. I was fine with that coffee was not available yet, which maybe explains what the bar arrangement is for. As it happens, I didn't care as much for this one. I recognized the taste of chestnuts, of course, so maybe I just don't like whatever the most common variety of chestnuts available here is, and that's why some mont-blanc I like and some I don't. It was still good, but that's not enough to get me back quickly.

After that, things were complicated. First, I looked of Octobre and overshot and had to come back, but it was where it was supposed to be and open. Then I looked for Plaisir, which was not where it was marked on my map (but close). I found it and they were closed again, with a sign on the door explaining that they were taking a week off (which is not marked on their website, calendar, unless it is buried somewhere in the long, rambling, poorly formatted posting), so this is still not a place that I would head to without planning a backup.

From there, I traced my way through Shimo-kitazawa, which was pretty active but not as crowded as I feared, so it's not unreasonable to run through there on a Sunday, in search of P. Main Mano. I was a little confused about which two of the three shops had closed and confirmed that this was one of the closed ones. There is still a café somewhere (it's on my google map, but I hadn't marked in on my portable road map), and they may have cake, but they don't have "patisserie" in their name, so since I'm not out to visit every café in Tokyo anyway (or Patisserie, really, just I sort of arbitrarily decided that I should find out whether this place was any good for cake after getting a cream puff there once), I think I won't worry about this place further. I'm hoping to get to Octobre later this week, as a long midweek run.

The long way back was about 10 km and averaged 11 km/h, as planned. I started on the high speed side and dipped in the middle but increased as I stopped needing to be concerned with navigation and could just focus on keeping up my speed.