Citron: Tarte Citron

During last week, I tried a new place on the neighborhood running course (though not the part I was working on practicing at the time), Citron in Minami-Aoyama. Actually, they only have the one cake, Tarte Citron, though they also have pound cake. The Tarte Citron is reasonably good, though not special. It's like a giant lemon bar. So one shop got checked off. This week, I'll stick to priority shops.

Cake-off: JPH: "Matcha" over Bigarreaux "Citron"

Still not running, as I've gone into a full-blown cold (after seemingly fighting something for a couple weeks but not stopping running), so I consoled myself with a cake-off sourced from Isetan. Although they did not have it back in February when I checked the main store, they had the Citron (500 yen) when Bigarreaux visited Isetan (though still no Le Plaisir, but they did not bring a very big selection of fresh cakes). This was excellent, with layers of lemony cream and sponge cake, and something that I would be interested to make (not that I've done a lot of baking laterly), but I was not feeling the greatness; since it was a fairly early evaluation (and thus a priority to revisit for cake-off), I'm not surprised that it doesn't meet my current standard for greatness.

The cake I got to compare it to was not very similar, but was something I was having a hard time matching something up to (it was a priority because I wanted to have it again before it disappeared from Jean-Paul Hévin, which supposedly will happen May 1, when they'll introduce a couple éclairs that I should evaluate). This was the Matcha (735 yen), which is a rectangular mousse layer cake. Being JPH, it's chocolate cake, and the matcha (powered Japanese green tea) obviously gives it much of it's color as well as it's name), though I'm not experienced enough with it to pick it out of the harmony. Actually, the main flavor comes from yuzu (which is citrus, which is how it relates to the Citron) and cherry, which in generally I'm not fond of, but again, I wouldn't necessarily be able to pick out of the harmony of flavors other than to note that something was working with the yuzu and matcha. This definitely is a great cake, so it easily wins this cake-off.

For Friday, I just got some bread to celebrate another work week over and a chance to rest and recover. This is their rye bread, and it was good, but not a really strong in flavor, so nothing special.

Saturday (1st shop) 30 km to Patisserie Bigarreaux: Le plaisir, Citron, and Pithivier

Well, since I had put together almost 26 km in two runs last time, I had planned to run 28 km, but I have to add 1 km for not looking at the original map and 1 km because I missed a turn (I updated the map), so I suppose I should plan 32 km for next time and see whether I can stay on course.

I ate in the store, Patisserie Bigarreaux on Sazae-san (longest running television animated series) Street, so given how tired I was, as soon as they put them in front of me I dug in (but in small bites, dissecting). However, since I was still in the store, I could take pictures afterwards.

First is Le plaisir, which, as you can see from the card is 540 yen and has hazelnuts and orange and some caramel-type flavor mousse chocolat. It is just the kind of mousse, cream, and crunchy base that I like. I'll say great cake, knowing that this evaluation might have more to do with the kind of cake I like than whether it was actual well made, but that's just the way it has to be.

The citron (lemon) for 480 yen is a lighter sweeter cake with actual somewhat spongy cake and lemon icing/cream. Again, great cake. 

The Pithivier for 340 yen, which is an almond cream filled mini-pie/tart, did not work following the sweet lemon. It did not taste bad, just a little bitter, so I did not appreciate it. I assume that it's actually fine, normally.