Paris S'éveille: Figue Spéculoos & Poire Bergamote

Not sure which runs I did which days on Sunday and Monday. I think I did local runs reviewing loops nearby one day, with mixed success, and a long one-way neighborhood course run down to add the Moto-Azabu--Roppongi loop and the Moto-Azabu loop the other. One of those days also involved Mont-Fuji and Pyramid from JPH, which are repeats, so I didn't bother to take any pictures. Still waiting to find a great cake to match the former up with for a cake-off.

Tuesday, despite being busy, I had some free time (can't remember why) and ran down to Paris S'éveille in response to a recent cake-off win. I was getting cake for two (like the JPH cakes), so now I'm a cake ahead for the next new cake (it might be awhile otherwise, since I want to visit all the under-sampled excellent and quite good shops, which is a lot). They had two new cakes: Figue Spéculoos & Poire Bergamote.

These are both successful as fancy cake and both were good quality, but not too exciting. I'm definitely not that fond the design of the fig/chocolate cake, which is sort of a thin brick. They are right to balance it with a light whip, but I still can't rate it higher than good.

The other was very fruit focused, so not so much my thing, especially the dome of gelatin, though actually the texture was good and I like the balance of that and the tart, as well as the balance of the two fruits, so I'll be generous and rate it excellent, which does not drag them down too much and all the shops in the superb category have the same problem of coming up with new cakes that match the best of their regulars.

Jean-Paul Hévin: Bergamot

Since I went out to Ryoura Sunday, Monday I got the third of this month's new cakes from Jean-Paul Hévin, Bergamot. For running, I tried and failed again on the Kita-Aoyama--Jinguumae--Shibuya loop (south Harajuku). I started near Cat Street again and failed within a turn after leaving it in middle, but got the part I screwed up previously, at the end of Cat Street, correct. Actually, I perhaps had been getting the middle part wrong previously without knowing it and this time after making the first turn correctly, I wasn't sure what to do next and chose wrong (I wasn't more than 170 deg wrong). I am satisfied with my knowledge of the Shibuya north loop, though I had my doubts at the time. I also got the tiny Minami-Aoyama loop but had multiple problems with the Shibuya--Minami-Aoyama loop.

Bergamot (Jean-Paul Hévin)

On the plus side, the Bergamot was great. I feared that the top was be gelatinous and destroy the texture, like with the updated Chocolat Framboise, but there was no problem. Orange-flavored cream and Bergamot-flavored like milk chocolate mousse with a crunchy base: the structure was standard for them, but a standard that works. Hope they keep this around for another month, but I'll maybe do a cake-off next week.

The Ritz-Carlton Café and Deli: Earl Grey Bergamot

Sunday, without running, I went to the The Ritz-Carlton Café and Deli and, after some wait (because we didn't want to eat outside), I got the cake set with the Earl Grey Bergamot (this was the English name on the card, but the Japanese name was completely different). Anyway, it is a chocolate mousse ovoid disk flavored orange (I'm assuming the tea as well). The base was chocolate and crunchy, which helped it. It was at least definitely good and I've giving it the first cake benefit of the doubt and calling it excellent, so I'll be back there before too long. They also have a selection of pastries. The other available cake with the cake set was the strawberry short cake, which I only had one bite of. It seemed good, but I'd like to have more to form a full opinion.

Monday, much of Tokyo closed down due to a few inches of snow. It was still reasonably nice for a run, so I went to Bubó Barcelona and got Gianduja Raviolo, which is a croissant-type pastry encasing some, but not a lot of gianduja (hazelnut and chocolate). It was a nice change of pastry from must a simple croissant, so I can call it excellent. They did not actually have anything else, so I'm not sure what's going on with their pastry selection. Even if I don't get a pastry, I'm going to have to stop in their next time I go by. However, the nearby pedestrian bridge was taped off, which means that right now that neighborhood, which I haven't quite got memorized, but close, is cut off, so I don't have 60 km of continuous neighborhood course prepared any more. I thought it might have just been for the weather, but later pedestrian bridges on other paths were not closed.

Jean-Paul Hévin: Bûchette O'clock

As planned, I did a long (~35 km) run through the 7 neighborhood courses that I had been practicing/revising so far. Through no special effort (as I haven't memorized any distance points), I at least averaged my target speed, which was 8 km/h. I was very satisfied with this experience, compared to running long main roads deep into the suburbs for the same distance, though now I want to decompose all the courses into their constituent loops and links and further simplify where I can. I'll give up avoiding overlapping and instead try to stick to what I think are the best roads for the goal. On the way, besides a couple packets of cookies, I got a yeast croissant from Heart Bread Antique, which opened my eyes to their maybe be split between bread croissants and pastry croissants, which is also probably true of other breads/pastries. Not sure whether it is worth making a distinction, but I'm after pastries. Still, this croissant was good and they definitely have other things that I'm willing to call pastries, so I'm expanding the corresponding map to include it (obviously, I did that already just before running, but I still hadn't added an icon).

The cake of the day, after I got back, was Bûchette O'clock from Jean-Paul Hévin, part of the their week-before-Christmas lineup. They had something like this last year that I only noticed on the last time and had time for one, which I had thought was excellent, but this one, while good, wasn't special to me. It's bergamot orange biscuit, yuzu chiboust, raspberry compote, and Madagascar cacao mousse. There's also lots of decorative chocolate, but the cake was a little soft and bland for me and the decorative chocolate did not really add the right texture element to balance it. Maybe I didn't eat it right or maybe fancy cake isn't what I want after a long run (though I ate a normal lunch first). Anyway, it's JPH, which is my top priority, so I'll make a point to get to the other cakes regardless and see whether they work better for me. In the meantime, I need to work on updating my old neighborhood area maps and trying on the next. When I get it up to 50+ km total, I'l maybe try another long run over the set.

Yoshinori Asami: Orangerie

Finally got to Yoshinori Asami again and bought cake (I've often gone there this year looking futilely for a particular cake, but not to actually buy something new). It's +7 km, which I did 10 km/h going out and 9 km/h coming back. They close at 19:30, so the schedule is a little tight but I was fine. They are relatively new and in a big building (didn't get it all in the shot) a few blocks from the station on a fairly quite street. It's outside the Yamanote Line, so I guess we're in car country and you need to have parking, though I'm not sure I've seen anyone with a car the few times there were other customers.

The cake was a chocolate dome, Orangerie, which is always risky. It was pretty standard in construction. I'm assuming it was something like Bavarian cream inside the chocolate mousse, but that was not exactly what was written on the description (which I didn't bother to figure out the French from the phonetic Japanese). I'm pretty sure it was Bergamot orange flavoring the cream. The chocolate was suitably dark to go with the orange and this was definitely excellent.

L'Atelier du Sucre: first cake, Sanguine

As planned, I ran the Shibamata History and Culture course, or at least I ran most of it. After the Shibamata Taishakuten temple, there are not any signs until the park, so I don't seem to have exactly the done the final part correctly. I suppose I should try again, which I should do anyway, since I want to get back to the cake shop. The run there was about 10 km/h apparently, which is faster than I expected. I was trying not to press it, since this is my longest recent run. I had the same speed from the end of the H&C course to the cake shop, but then dropped down to the high end of 8 km/h on the way home, not surprisingly, though some of that was navigation issues and a lot of it was the quite heavy crowds on the streets for the cherry blossom viewing. Total distance was between 42.5 and 43.0 kilometers, so I met my goal of a marathon length run. I'll do two shorter runs next week, am busy the week after that, so maybe I'll try a 50 km run in three weeks, though I haven't planned out where to go yet. I still have maybe three more H&C courses to do, but that last couple are ~100 km, so probably not until the fall, if ever.

The Shibamata course is pretty nice, although the temple entrance shopping street was packed, so so running it would be better to skip that. Like many courses, the beginning is not marked that I could see, and no signs after the temple until you get to the end (or near the end), where they have of the full-sized maps. Otherwise, it seems like a nice neighborhood, especially compared to the bleak view running east from Tokyo, though that is skewed by the fact that I need roads that will connect me reasonable well between bridges.

The cake was the Sanguine, that is, blood (orange), which is used with one layer of cream. There is also Bergamot orange, which I suppose is the slices on top. The other cream layer is milk chocolate. The bottom has chocolate crunch and paliné. I done that this is sandwiched between probably a almond biscuit, though I haven't backed either for a while, so I'm not sure that I could distinguish from a hazelnut one. It was simple and cheep (only 400 yen), but I'll have to say it's excellent, so I'll have to get back there, which is not very convenient, but maybe I'll work it into a longer training run.

Note that I was fairly restrained after all the gorging the previous two days and did not have any other snacks along the way, or even a sports drink (which would probably be bad if it were hotter and I was sweating more). I did have a couple English muffins with tea milk jam immediately upon getting home.

Ginza run to Frédéric Cassel: Saint Honoré Citron-Bergamote

Was running fast at the beginning, so ran less than I planned to keep with my budget through Saturday. Specifically, I was running about 10 km/h the first 3 km, so I'm going to have to up my speed for my training runs to 11 km/h. After that, I was definitely around 9 km/h, but I went underground early in Ginza (you can't run very fast in Ginza crowds, anyway), and didn't pick up the return run until the far corner of Hibiya Park, and that was just 3.4 km at about 8 km/h to the market.

At Ginza, I got the Saint Honoré Citron-Bergamote, or maybe it was just called Saint Honoré Bergamote (didn't have my pen, and they don't let you take pictures), like on a promotional picture on their Facebook page (the Frédéric Cassel Fontainebleau one, not the one in Japanese). Anyway, it's 756 yen, as usual, and the cream is lemon and the confit and candy coating (it's hard, though the card said "gel" I thought, although maybe there's some in the balls) are bergamot orange. Thanks to the coating, the balls are hard/crispy, at least on top, which is a clever way to keep them from getting soggy, so I had to eat them them whole, which is not a problem. The base is also crispier than a typical tart base, so maybe it's choux pastry too. Excellent recovery from last week's disappointment. Next visit to Ginza, I should go to Dalloyau, which was my backup today (there's a Dalloyau counter facing the Frédéric Cassel counter in Ginza Mitsukoshi, but they don't have cake, so you have to go to their main store).

Next run is Saturday, and I'll try again to go to a new place. This time, I've got two lined up, so one of them should be open on a Saturday (or I'll go to Isetan: I'm interesting in the visiting shop). Might have a problem with rain, though.

Sunday: Jean-Paul Hévin (Isetan chocolate bar)

Catching up on my reporting (so I can get something new, after  walking there), I went to the Jean-Paul Hévin chocolate bar at Isetan. We got one cake, the Bergam for 699 yen, and one "ice", Glace Pilée au Chocolat Rhubarbe Mangue for 1388 yen.

The cake Bergamot is orange-flavored chocolate mousse with a little orange Bavarian cream. There are also some ganache and crunchy bit biscuit toward the bottom. The orange just blends with the chocolate, I couldn't really taste it to identify it, though there is a fruitiness. This, finally, is a great cake. I can look forward to having it again.

Ice deserts like Glace Pilée au Chocolat Rhubarbe Mangue I don't get. I don't really even like chocolate ice cream any more, I find, though I would prefer that to "ice". It's chocolate favor with with mango and rhubarbe (though I didn't notice the latter). There is some gummy stuff in there too, which I don't know what it was. It was not really bad, but for me, only okay. Not something I would ever order myself.

30/20/10 intervals and Del'Immo

Heavy rain and wind today, but there was a break at 7 pm, so I went out. My back is a little better again today and I ran with the backpack, but emptied it except for an umbrella on the not bad side and a phone, a couple cards, a 5000 yen bill, and a key in the front pockets. I did 2 sets of 5 30/20/10 intervals and started a third but only got thru the 4th (and that was through pretty heaving pedestrian traffic). I didn't take the shortest route, but still not long enough to Del'Immo for my first time.

Del'Immo is in Akasaka and has cake for adults. I choose the Duo Pistache for 600, starting at the high end, but I can't remember why I choose this over their other pistachio, which has figs whereas this one has cherries, so I was little surprised when I went to eat it. The full description is that it is thick pistachio cream and a pistachio and light white chocolate mousse (this cake rates only 35% chocolat) accented by morello cherry and bergamot orange. It was excellent, however, so I'll be going back.

Mostly walked home because (i) hard to sprint with cake, (ii) my back is not perfect yet, (iii) it rained some of the time (I did get bored and ran for a couple minutes, but then stopped when it started to rain again), and (iv) I was exhausted and very hungry, because intervals involving running at top speed, even for 10 seconds, are hard. Thinking I'll do 1 min/1 min intervals again to Midtown for Toshi Yoroizuka with Takagi (if I don't give up on them as great) or Neues (if I give up on getting great cake) as backups, although I'm tempted to try to get down to Ebisu to someone I haven't bought from yet (and I could go to Toshi Yoroizuka down there, if that didn't work out).

Bigarreaux: 2nd cake, Bergamote Fraise

No running (I have to restrain myself for tomorrow morning) but cake from Isetan. I went for the visiting patisserie again, since the maskotte on Wednesday was very good. This time was Bergamote Fraise  (ベルグモットフレーズ), meaning Bergamot orange and strawberry for 520 yen. It was good, with a good balance between the cake layers and mousse/cream layers (1:3), which makes it soft, which is why the strawberry on top got pushed off center, and you can see that I lost some strawberry sauce to the box. I'd visit again (actually, I reviewed tomorrows route map, and I'll go within a couple blocks of there, coincidentally, and my endpoint is not too far away, so I could take the station in that direction back).