Café Le Cordon Bleu, Opéra au Thé Vert

Sunday was rain but not so much or so cold that I couldn't run. It did stop me from taking photos along the way, but I did some reconnaissance along the way that made the trip a little longer. My goal was to get a new cake from Paris S'éveille, in response to a cake-off win. Previously they had two new cakes that I was not excited about, because they were coffee flavored, but I've had another similar cake with coffee and tonka beans and it was fine. At the shop, though, they only had one that was coffee cream on coffee gelatin, which I'm pretty sure would make me sick, so I gave up. I'll check again next month (actually, I'll probably be back before that for a cake-off, since they have so many great cakes). I've had plenty of pastries from there (including great ones), so I'm not stiffing them on what they are due in terms of number of items tried. Still need to get back to the two cake-off winners after that, but they're both open after work on a workday.

Instead, I ran back and stopped at Café Le Cordon Bleu, which is one of the shops I've labeled as quite good based on only two cakes. The cake I choose as the third was Opéra au Thé Vert, which is chocolate and chocolate. It was mostly green tea, and maybe its legitimate for it too seem watery, since so is green tea, but I don't find that acceptable in cake. My experience with green tea is maybe too limited (I tend to drink the same cheap stuff at work every day) for the nuance of the chocolate to get through. I've going to give this the benefit of the doubt and say it was okay, since it was reasonable, but the shop goes straight to the good group, where I'll probably never hear from it again, since it's going to be a long time before I'll want fourth cakes from Tokyo cake shops that are just average. Next in the list of holiday only places: Ces Jours. Actually, I only have a few to go, and not so many workday-accessible ones.