En Vedette, Annette

Monday night, even though I did exactly the same thing Friday, I ran down to Viron in Shibuya to see whether they had a new cake, which they didn't. From there, I went to En Vedette, since they were close and I'm coming up on wanting another new cake from them (and several other quite exceptional shops). As it happened, they had one that tempted me, so I went for it: Annette. Unfortunately, I've already forgotten what the fruit was, but the picture shows strawberry, which I can believe. It wasn't so strong, obviously, nor would I want it to be in this kind of cake. Also inside was pistachio cake, but again, mild, so not my kind of cake so much. But the outside was white chocolate, and that is a fine taste, with the others just there to accent it. So even if it's not along my usual lines, it was a high quality item that I enjoyed, so I can say it was excellent.

While I'm blogging, I'll admit that I was lazy and walked back, protecting my cake. Tuesday, I did a run just out to Tokyo Midtown for my favorite grocery chocolate, also stopping for some Lindt chocolate that was 63% discounted at the local supermarket. Wednesday, I got up early and ran before work (which I wasn't taking the morning off). A little more crowded on the streets than my evening runs around there, but felt good. I stopped by Pierre Gagnaire and confirmed that the folks working there aren't actually told about the cakes (green tea is the theme, but one of the cakes on the posters I haven't actually seen in person). In the evening was rain and Thursday I am taking off the morning (though the rain is predicted to be even heavier then, so probably just walking for cake), so I worked out indoors, more than I usually do, which means three rather than two NHK muscle training clips (but the level 2 ones, so...) and a couple sets of curls, which is a couple more than I usually do lately.

Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's Chocolat Pralin over En Vedette's Mont-blanc

On my last morning off in the series, I did a cake-off, but since it was Tuesday, a couple cakes that I wanted would unavailable, so I finally did the third-round between two-time losers. That sounds bad, but these stayed among the great cakes despite losing, so I wasn't that worried about either of them. In particular, I remembered the Chocolat Pralin by Sadaharu Aoki as being definitely great, just matched against heavy hitters both times. It gets the win this time, which is not surprisingly. I really like chocolate and praline, and it's a good sized cake. It's weakness is perhaps it's simplicity, so would could get tired of it. In this case, I think I had tea and I had another cake to breakup things, really nice mont-blanc which gets a good amount of meringue in by sandwiching the cream wrapped in chestnut past between two disks. No disappointments with either.

En Vedette, Tarte Pamplemousse

After a disappointing coffee shop cake after a long day of running around the north Omote-Sandou Stn. area, I went down to Shibuya to get Tarte Pamplemousse from En Vedette. Grapefruit is a tough sell for me, but I've exhausted the other options at En Vedette. Unfortunately, it remains a hard sell, though I'll allow that it was good.

Cake-off: Rue de Passy's Mille-Feuille Praliné Citron over En Vedette's Mont-Blanc

Three cake-offs ago, I went by Rue de Passy for their Mille-Feuille Praliné Citron, which has no problem, and then stopped at the Shibuya Scramble  Square to get the Mont-Blanc from the En Vedette counter. Unfortunately, between the heat and road vibration, the soft middle of the mont-blanc sank. It wasn't that noticeable eating it, but I feel a little bad that I have to choose the Mille-Feuille Praliné Citron. Still, this is only a second-round cake-off, so even with two losses, The Mont-Blanc can still get a third round, just it seems to be available year round, so I don't want to rush it, to keep it available for seasonal opponents. 

En Vedette, Citronné

Saturday, after a morning appointment, I ran down to Shibuya Scramble Square (the building) and visited En Vedette, where I got Citronné. I had had a cake similar to this, so I worried that I was working with an out-of-date list, but I was right to remember that the other one was strawberry, not lemon (I assume from the shape and name). the cake inside is fairly dense and is layered, despite the round appearance on the outside, so not a mousse or a typical lemon tart. In the end, I decided it was a nice change in lemon and rated it excellent. This brings En Vedette up to the level of a quite exceptional shop, so I can finally promote them, which means that Ryoura gets demoted down to just exceptional and they'll have to wait for a cake-off win probably for another visit from me, since I've had a good sample from them.

On the way BE from there, I stopped at Path and got a Croissant, since the Pain au Chocolat was great. The Croissant, however, didn't seem like anything special, though it suffered from not being as freshly baked as the former (though it was still warm).

En Vedette, Cocoanana

After a long week of mostly long work days (except Monday and Friday, which is the reverse of usual), I took advantage of the reopening of Shibuya Scramble Square and its relatively late hours even under pandemic conditions (compared to local department stores), and got a new cake from En Vedette, which is challenging the quite exceptional shop list. This time I got new cake Cocoanana as (maybe, I'm suspecting I'm overlooking one) the 16th cake from there. Note to parse as Coco+Anana, as in coconut and pineapple, though there is also, I think some passion fruit sauce. The coconut aspect was fine, but pineapple cake isn't so exciting. Good, but it's starting to look doubtful that the shop will get a promotion. Still, they have a great cake that's only done one round, so I'd probably get back there soon regardless, if I can get two new great cakes available and the same time.

En Vedette, Chou Nougat

From now I guess the last Sunday of the previous month, the other shop I visited was En Vedette. Well, I also visited Éclat des Jours to return some glasses and get a croissant, but I've already forgotten how the croissant was, so I'll just have to get a different pastry from there. The cake of En Vedette, though was more like a pastry than cake, though with extra touches tipping back toward cake: Chou Nougat, where I'm not sure what's in the nougat, but there are some almond slices in there. The cream is crème diplomate, which I need to look up. In the middle there, protecting the bottom from the cream, is a macaron. It's a weird chou cream, but I've decided it's unique design deserves at least a semi-excellent rating. It's small, actually, but only half the price of a normal cake. 
 

En Vedette, Meringue Chantilly

In the evening of Saturday, I went out to do a neighborhood run for the Nezu Fine Arts Museum clump, which comprises the just revised Minami-Aoyama--Nishi-Azabu south loop, which I did my first clockwise run of, and the tiny Nishi-Azabu 1 north loop, which requires a long run through Aoyama Cemetery, a pretty popular running a bicycling route with a slope. With dinner I actually had a third cake (no holidays this week and I have a lot of priority shops, so I'm working), but I forgot to take a picture. It was Meringue Chantilly, and it looked like the last one I had, except there were some tiny blue/black berries of some sort and the whipped cream was caramel flavored. It's a basic desert and good, but not beyond that. En Vedette needs at least one excellent cake in the next two be able to get promoted at this point, and the choices are getting slim, which is how I ended up with Meringue Chantilly this time.

En Vedette, Macaron Printemps

Only yesterday, when I was busy in the morning, I did a run out to Miyoshi (where the parks have lots of people, unlike more local parks, which have been taped off) to get a new cake from En Vedette. This time I went for a cake that was actually marked as new, Macaron Printemps, and took the last one on display. We're in the final month of strawberry season, apparently, and strawberries are the most popular fruit (apparently there are more Japanese varieties than any other country's, though China has the biggest production), so no surprise that this is full of strawberries.

Starting with the positive, I walked the cake all the way back, but first had a Pain au Chocolat, also from En Vedette. My breakfast was long before I set out, so I was pretty hungry, which might be why I found this pastry relatively light (so easy to eat), but I believe it was excellent.

Actually, I'm not so hot on this cake. I don't like my macarons too soft, even though that's a deliberate goal for some macaron desserts. The strawberries were fine (I have no idea what variety) and it's reasonable to call it good, but I would steer clear of similar cakes, given a choice. Still, they call all please me and this shop is still in line to be promoted. I'll probably get there back for a new cake.

The running was in the evening, where I finished off confirming my revisions to three of the loops at the corner of Omote-Sandou.

En Vedette, Fromage Blanche

Saturday's other cake (cutting down on trips) was Fromage Blanche (I know, but that's the logical interpretation of the phonetic Japanese; if only there was some Chou pastry, it could be Fromage Blanc Chou). White cheese is pretty tasteless, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but the raspberry was just the right amount, and cheese mousse has a great texture, so I'm much more confident calling this excellent than the previous cheese cake I reported. Also, it didn't suffer from the travel by bicycle as much as other cakes last Saturday.

Cake-off: Paris S'éveille's Giverny over En Vedette's Rocher

Did a cake-off, first going to Paris S'éveille to get Giverny. Only problem is, they were opening late and I arrived early. However, I hadn't done my stretches the day be fore and had no trouble filling a hour hour catching up. There's a little two set sort of park across the street with a phone booth where I could social distance and keep an eye on the door to make sure people didn't line up in front of me, which they didn't. Unfortunately, road vibrates caused layer shifting and scattering of fruit. After bring this home and having lunch with the extra new cake, I went out by En Vedette, also by bicycle and also getting one extra cake: my contribution to reducing unnecessary trips. Again, the road vibration separated layers, in this case the top decoration. No great impact on taste of either, I assume. These were pretty well matched. On the one hand, Rocher is a  fine collection of things I like, as far as being nutty and chocolaty. On the other hand, Giverny offered a different slightly fruity alternative and avoided being over sweet better, I think, so in the end I decided to give it the win.

En Vedette: Tarte Fraise

At the same time I was securing a cake for a cake-off, after running to the main shop in Miyoshi, I got one new cake, since this shop is challenging to rise to a quite exceptional position. This time, I went with a cake quite similar to last time, in that it is pistachio and strawberry, but this time it's Tarte Fraise, where the base is a pistachio tart, and of course the cream above is pistachio. Usually strawberry tarts are custard tarts, but I appreciate this much better and can say it was excellent.

Cake-off: Jean-Paul Hévin's Violette over En Vedette's Rocher

Last Sunday, having caught up the previous week one week late on Saturday (where the week runs Saturday to Friday), I started the next week with a third-round cake-off between two undefeated cakes, the recent Rocher by En Vedette, and Violette by Jean-Paul Hévin, which had been sleeping in my freezer since a week ago, waiting for a competitor. I assume all the Jean-Paul Hévin shops are closed by now, and that at least the Tokyo one's were closed by last weekend, so the latter cake is somewhat a miracle. It also tastes like a miracle: the perfect mousse layer cake, accented with fruit. The Rocher really has more going on, as far as textures, and I'll be giving it a fourth round soon, but this JPH cake remains undefeated. Too made I'll probably have to wait until next year before a fourth round (I'm hoping that I don't have to wait until next year for all other cakes, or I hope they expand their capacity to make cakes for delivery, since their Marco Polo was sold out last I looked).

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

Saturday late afternoon, I went out intending to see if any shops on the Jinguumae--Kita-Aoyama loop that I wanted to hit were open (none were), but before I got that far, I ran into a new shop in Naitou-machi,

'A'ala Herbalbar Yotsuya, that was selling baked goods through a plastic screen, so I got what they were calling a Strawberry Scone, or at least I'm interpreting what they showed me as saying that. It's not particularly scone-shaped, but the structure is basically correct, except it's also got frosting, so it's pretty far from a scone. It was good, though, and I wish them luck. It means I have to expand my Naitou-machi loop to include them, but it doesn't effect the total distance of the clump much. It's on the way to lots of places, so I just have to remember to do it when I'm going or coming back from that direction.

I only ran about half of a long afternoon, walking the rest, as I was adding pictures for mostly convenience stores, coffee shops, and drug stores that to the running map. I started with Harajuku, went down to Shibuya Station and then worked back up Aoyama-doori until Aoyama 1-choume.

The main event of the day, and the reason I visited two shops, besides wanting new cakes from both, was for a cake-off between two recently discovered cakes that won their first rounds: Pierre Gagnaire's Mousse au Chocolat et Yuzu and En Vedette's Rocher. Even though one was mousse, I found that the cooler was too much for it, so I set both aside at halfway through and gave them another 5 minutes before I finished, which made both just right. Still both great cakes, but the Rocher has more flavors textures going on, so it gets the win, even though the chocolate mousse is a great presentation and I don't get tired of it (which is good, because I plan a 3rd round with it soon).

En Vedette, Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache

As the noon run on Saturday, I went out to En Vedette in Koutou-ku (which Shibuya Scramble Square is shut down), looking around and taking photos of sites on future neighborhood running course loops in the areas northeast from Yotsuya Station. I took the longer route rather than go past the main Mitsukoshi in Nihonbashi, though that is shut down as well. I came back by train, which had about three people per car, so I felt relatively safe. Also, I'm now running wearing a mask, since someone ahead of me might have coughed, though I also avoid trailing in people's wake.

As a new cake, I got the Saint-Honoré Rouge Pistache, which combines a lot of things I like. Red fruit, not so much, but a little fruit goes with choux pastry better than heavy things like chocolate, as well as being a much better accent for pistachio. In this case, the cream puffs are filled with fruit sauce rather than pistachio, which I might not have chosen, but the balance was fine. The pistachio cream was more whipped cream than the thicker paste I was expecting, but again, that might be for the best, this was excellent. This shop continues to impress me and should easily reach the quite exceptional shop group, even if I'm going to have to have to get further from my preference in their line-up. Unlike Pierre Gagnaire, their residential base area lets them have a full line-up. They recognized me, of course, from my trips to Shibuya and thanked me for the visit.

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.

En Vedette, Fragola

Monday or Tuesday (can't remember which), I took advantage of the fact that, during the week, the food floors kept their regular hours, so I could go after work for another new cake from En Vedette, which is heading for promotion. I've run through most of their line-up, so I went for the shape cake this time, Fragola (which is Italian for strawberry). The outside is white chocolate and the inside is lemon cream and strawberry jelly. The cake provides some texture variation, but I think it needs something more on that front. It's good, but weak for me, maybe because I'm not a big strawberry fan.

En Vedette, Mont-blanc

Monday of last week, I had lunch at Isetan and could make buy cake in the middle of the day on a workday (and in fact would be the only such cake during the week). En Vedette was visiting, so I took advantage of the opportunity to buy their Mont-blanc. This is the usual whipped cream under chestnut paste arranged horizontally between two meringue disks, which makes for a high meringue to cream and chestnut, and a rather sweet cake, which suits me, especially for something that get verge on bitter like chestnut. In fact, I want to have it again, which is another way of saying that it was great. This puts En Vedette on a path to challenge the category above, quite exceptional shops, though this third great cake probably isn't going to be enough to take it all the way, even if it stands up under testing.

Cake-off: Paris S'éveille's Gateau Vanille over En Vedette's En Vedette

In the name of completion, I'll mention that I did a quick weights workout on Friday night, but that Saturday I was busy. Had some time to kill in the afternoon near Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. I saw that the Starbucks there was listed as "Reserve", so I was hoping that it had some of the fancy baked goods, like the Starbucks Reserve in Aobadai or the Princi on the other side of the river and the old Yamanote Road in Sarugaku-chou, but no, just the usual Starbucks stuff, except for a fancy coffee bar with their reserve brand. I shared the New York Cheese Cake, which is good, and The Chocolat by P. Libre's Ichiei Taguma, which has chestnut and caramel, besides the obvious chocolate, and ultimately didn't work for me, though it was okay.

Sunday, there was running, cake from proper shops, a pastry, a neighborhood course run, and indoor muscle training: a full day. I wrote a pastry, but on the run I started off with a pastry from Excelsior Caffé, because they are convenient, and higher priority targets along my route were closed. It was okay as a pastry (maybe good as bread), but better than that. By the time I left, they had Pain au Chocolat, which would have been a better test.

I went first to Bien-être, where I expected to get Cuit Chocolat for a fourth-round 1st runner's up cake-off. I had just been thinking that they hadn't had a new cake for a year, but they proved me wrong: the chocolate cake had evolved, though now I'm confused about into what. Maybe it was Anzu Frais Chocolat, which would be fresh Japanese apricot chocolate cake, which I could deal with, but at the time the topping looked like but the topping actually looked like Azuki Frais, fresh sweet beans. Either way, I considered a new cake (though the base cake might be the same) and wasn't prepared to deal with it. Since I was still particially in that direction, I stuck with the second target of Paris S'éveille's Gateau Vanille (though I had scare when the tray sold out in front of me, when it was already afternoon, but fortunately another tray was brought out) and instead matched it with En Vedette's signature cake. It's a little early for them, so the next couple cake-offs at least won't be fourth-round one's, as I still have a third round ones to do (I have a second-round one, but Sunday doesn't work for it).

Gateau Vanille is perhaps the best presentation of vanille (the competition being PH's vanille tart, which is currently one and one among cake-offs) in more or less pure form (actually, white chocolate), whereas En Vedette is an interest mixture of strong flavors. Both are interesting, but maybe the En Vedette is more challenging and I was in the mood for straightforward and am giving the win to Gateau Vanille.

Didn't notice any new cakes at PS to go for in response to their win, though I was more worried about getting my Gateau Vanille, so I didn't look properly. I've reviewing their pastries, though, so I got the Pain au Chocolat. This thing is huge and looks perfect. It's pretty hollow, intentionally, which isn't a problem but isn't particularly helpful. There isn't any more chocolate than typically, though more would probably imbalance it. Not my favorite, but I can't fault it, it was excellent.

The evening run was trying to do the updated/new Minami-Motomachi--Samon-chou--Suga-chou--Shinanomachi--Wakaba--Yotsuya loop. I knew all the sites and I might have worked out the correct order, which would pretty much determine the route (I know the roads I need), except there was a flaw in the previous map down at the nearest point to Shinanomachi Station that I fixed but going straight instead of turning a block early but didn't remember, so tonight was just practice. Still I could do the revised/new Suga-chou look successfully clockwise, all 152 meters of it, so there's that. Maybe later in the week, after I've taken cake of my main cake targets (or if I'm starting too late to try Monday or Tuesday).

En Vedette, Tarte Fraise

Thursday, I made the last visit to bring En Vedette up to enough cakes to promote them to the exceptional list. Previous cakes were good enough that were was no chance of them failing to be promoted. Remaining choices of new cakes were 3 strawberry cakes and a unique-looking mont-blanc. Though I'd like to the try the mont-blanc, I figured one of the strawberry cakes deserved a try, so I went with the Tarte Fraise, which is pistachio. I appreciated strawberry and pistachio in a number of cakes, so it was perhaps the safest choice none the less. And it was definitely excellent. The interesting point is perhaps the tart, which was relatively soft for a tart but more like a butter/nut tart than, for example, a dacquoise. Very nice.

Since it was on the way, I tried to do the Takeshita clump of my neighborhood running course, but failed completely to make the correct turn on the revised Jinguumae northwest loop. In the usual spirit of sour grapes, I found one new site for the map (Sweets Paradise [Harajuku]), which nullified the previous loop. Actually, I'm going to have to split the loop to cover more of Shitatake Street (which is I'd actually like to avoid as much as a possible). Maybe next week when I'm running southwest, I'll try the clump with the two new loops again.

No running Friday, as I was busy, but I swung by the the Sadaharu Aoki counter at Isetan (which Sadaharu Aoki himself of signing, but I didn't buy that high level an item), and got a baked sweet: Cake au Chocolat Pistache. It's small, but excellent, as far as baked sweets go, versus fresh cakes. Hoping they'll have more fresh cakes, but I also wouldn't mind trying the matcha version.