Cake-off: Pierre Gagnaire's Mousse au Chocolat et Yuzu over En Vedette's Mont-Blanc

Only yesterday, on a necessary trip for food, I did neighborhood course run down through western Minami-Aoyama down to Roppongi. Coming back, I stopped for my first pastry from Nino Caffe, across the main north-south street from Nogi Park. They had various fillings, and plain, but I went with the chocolate. Note sure how they were naming this, so I'll call it a just Chocolate Croissant. The croissant is pretty soft and holds a lot of filling, which seems to be chocolate custard. Very rich and good, but of of course, not so sophisticated. It was too messy to each on the way, so I saved it for home, even though I was also carrying cake and still needed to stop at a grocery (where the shelves were pretty bare, so I just got bananas, which I was running low on).

The main event, of course, was the cake-off, though that required another trip, this time down to Shibuya through Jinguumae, where I found that Yatsudoki had built a shop deep in on a street not on the running course. In the end, adding it led to merging three loops, so I'm back to having one big loop south of Omote-Sandou Road to match the one north, for the main strip between Harajuku Stn. and Omote-Sandou Stn. That's turned this clump of loops (which include a new one using the remaining bridge over Meiji-Doori to get to a little loop under Yamanote Line that has a coffee shop and a convenience store. Under current conditions, Shibuya Scramble Square had almost no customers, so social distancing was possible.

Today's match up was a first-round cake-off between two recent picks, and I'm still a little tentative about both, but they both are great simple cakes, chocolate mousse cake in the form of Pierre Gagnaire's Mousse au Chocolat et Yuzu and meringue mont-blanc in En Vedette's Mont-Blanc. I'm giving this one to the mousse cake, because it manages to give a real dark chocolate taste to mousse and cutting it with yuzu so it doesn't wear out it's welcome. En Vedette should get a remain yet, as their Roche also has one win.

Saturday update

As planned, I went out and hit the neighborhood running course and finished revisiting some parts. I finished revisiting the Sendgaya central and Jinguumae north loops, though I have to traverse parts of both of these to get anywhere remaining. Down on the bit of the Kita-Aoyama--Jinguumae--Shibuya loop, I got a Chocolate Croissant from The Little Bakery Tokyo, which I've newly added. It was definitely good, though the outside was a little tough and the center was denser than I expected, so it was a little bagel-like. I also will add a picture to the map after this.

It took 50 minutes to cross the road from Yoyogi west, so that gives me a benchmark of how easy it is going to be to expand my running northeast (by doubling back). Today, though, was about filling in to the south on this side of Yamanote Line. I also got the same type of pastry, under the usual name of Pain au Chocolat from 15°C, which I still need a picture from (the shop, not the pastry). This was better, much more airy inside and the patterning is obviously more tradition, though still a little tough on the outside, so perhaps its just the heat. I found it interesting that the lines of chocolate inside weren't symmetric (one was in the middle and one was above and on one side, which made it seemed more handmade. Also definitely good, though I didn't eat it until was on my way back (at about 95 minutes).

Had to check a fork on the Hatagaya-Motoyoyogichou-Nishihara-Tomigaya-Uehara loop, since it's been a while, and I overshot the new turn on the Kamiyama-chou--Shouto loop, but doubled back and could complete revisited that loop, as well as the little Udagawa-chou loop for the Shibuya Viron, so mission accomplished. I ran all the way back (except stopping at Yoyogi Park to eat the second pastry) and had a total run a little over 115 minutes and seem okay.