L'Atelier Motozo, Torta di Ricotta

Did what passing for running with me these days, 1-min intervals, but only about 20 intervals, and then just walking, due to my knee. After confirming that Viron had nothing new (though the Valentine's cakes were gone), I made a 4th visit to (L'atelier) Motozo in Miguro-ku. They're only open 4 hours a day, 4 days a week now, with no café or bar visible. They do Italian desserts, so not a lot for me. I've already had their mont-blanc (and a variation) and one other cake. This time I went with their cheesecake, Torta di Ricotta, which seemed like my best chance. Still, it didn't look particularly encouraging, reminding of me of a café cake from Kobe, though that one was probably pretty good, now that I think about it. Anyway, it was much better than I expected, probably better than average for patisserie cheesecake overall, which is impressive. However, it's a tough call and I think I have to go with calling this definitely good, which isn't going to be enough to keep it in the quite fine group if I make a cut. Still need to find 7 more better shops, though.

Went out about noon, which is about right to visit L'Atelier Motozo, since they don't open until 1 pm (staffing problems). On the way, I checked out some potential sites on the Jinguumae--Kita-Aoyama--Shibuya loop. The neighborhood is a maze and the current loop violates my general rules in a couple place, so in adding a Starbucks, I noticed some other cafés that seemed to require that I split up this loop and made three tentative new loops, one for east of Omotesandou Station, one for the southern part of Cat Road, and one circling the UN university. At least one current shop had disappeared and I found more cafés, so the loops still aren't stable. Also, I'm considering adding a couple more chain coffee shops, though I also ruled one out (it was more like a restaurant than a café).

I also worked on reviewing some current very minor loops and did them clockwise: the Shibuya east loop, Dougenzaka loop, and Sakuragaoka-chou loop. Then I finally made I way down to L'Atelier Motozo a little before 2 pm. Eating in requires ordering a drink, so I got take-out. It took longer to get home than I liked, maybe 10 minutes over the hour I told them, so I'm not sure whether the center of the cake would have been more solid if I had been faster, though I did give it about an hour in the refrigerator. This shop does Italian deserts, so not my usual style. I went with Fiore Fata, which they mark as "original", versus the mostly traditional deserts, at least in name. This is  blancmange, cherry sauce, cranberry syrup, inside of pistachio mousse, which is wrapped in an herb spongy cake. Can't say that I need more blancmange in my cakes, but this was fine as filler and the cherry and cranberry harmonized well so the fruit taste was better than I would usually expect from either separately and that fruit went well with the pistachio. That much was good, but wrapping it in the herb cake sent this into excellent territory. So this shop too will remain the the quite fine shop list. Not sure that I'm going to be able to slim this list down to the desired 32 shops. Not even sure I can get it down to few enough shops that I could cut the bottom of the list below and get two ranks of shops totally around 96 cakes. Well, there's always the next big cut when I go for having sampled 4 cakes from each in this one and 2 from the one below. That shouldn't take more than a few more years.

Completely forgot to talk about the running. It was misty rain almost the whole way, which looks like the best I can expect for the next week. Total, I was out about three hours, though there were obviously some stopped for popping in shops and taking a few photos. It had been three days since my last run, so this time I included 9 intervals of 4 minutes of running, so I'm still taking it easy but starting to build up. I'm running long enough that I could do a local training run without walking and cover some regular loops.

L'atelier Motozo: Monte Bianco

Ran first to Motozo, though I got a little confused and ending up running around a couple blocks and checking the map near P. Glycine because I forgot that I had to cross Yamanote Avenue first and mistook it for the expressway after Motozo. Still, the run came out 7 km, which was what I expected, and it was (a low) 12 km/h, so faster than necessary but respectable. (My goal was 11 km/h for the trip, wanting more consistency of pace than last week.)

There, I got the Monte Bianco (モンテビアンコ; 583 yen) to compare with last time's Monte Bianco Giapponese. I choose eat in, since all the seats were free and it's cold this weekend. I was fine with that coffee was not available yet, which maybe explains what the bar arrangement is for. As it happens, I didn't care as much for this one. I recognized the taste of chestnuts, of course, so maybe I just don't like whatever the most common variety of chestnuts available here is, and that's why some mont-blanc I like and some I don't. It was still good, but that's not enough to get me back quickly.

After that, things were complicated. First, I looked of Octobre and overshot and had to come back, but it was where it was supposed to be and open. Then I looked for Plaisir, which was not where it was marked on my map (but close). I found it and they were closed again, with a sign on the door explaining that they were taking a week off (which is not marked on their website, calendar, unless it is buried somewhere in the long, rambling, poorly formatted posting), so this is still not a place that I would head to without planning a backup.

From there, I traced my way through Shimo-kitazawa, which was pretty active but not as crowded as I feared, so it's not unreasonable to run through there on a Sunday, in search of P. Main Mano. I was a little confused about which two of the three shops had closed and confirmed that this was one of the closed ones. There is still a café somewhere (it's on my google map, but I hadn't marked in on my portable road map), and they may have cake, but they don't have "patisserie" in their name, so since I'm not out to visit every café in Tokyo anyway (or Patisserie, really, just I sort of arbitrarily decided that I should find out whether this place was any good for cake after getting a cream puff there once), I think I won't worry about this place further. I'm hoping to get to Octobre later this week, as a long midweek run.

The long way back was about 10 km and averaged 11 km/h, as planned. I started on the high speed side and dipped in the middle but increased as I stopped needing to be concerned with navigation and could just focus on keeping up my speed.

L'atelier Motozo: Monte Bianco Giapponese

Today was a company holiday, so I went to a new shop outside my normal weekday range (since Au Bon Vieux Temps is closed according to their usually weekly schedule), L'atlerier Motozo, which Sweet Sonobe mentioned. I didn't actually look back at his post, but he claimed the specialty as the Monte Bianco (or at least the specialty of the chef, who moved from shop that closed), which is a rational version (the cream is on top of the chestnut paste, not the reverse) of a mont-blanc. Actually, I got a modification of that, the Monte Bianco Giapponese (モンテビアンコジャッポネーゼ, 810 yen), which uses Japanese chestnuts, perhaps because I'm a cake snob. The cake was excellent, though not that different from other mont-blanc, which is a fairly simple cake, mostly. The meringue base, which has some chocolate in it, I think, is a flat disk, in keeping with all their few cakes being mainly tarts. There was an eat-in counter (as well as a bar, though I'm not sure whether and when that's used), but it was a reasonably nice day and it's next to Meguro River, so I ate at a bench outside.

L'atelier Motozo

The runs to and from there were 7 km each, in north of Meiji Gingu and out through Omotesando. Both were on the low side of 11 km/h. I came back through Omotesando because I want to stop at the renovated Pierre Hermé (photo failure). They've added a casual counter on the first floor and sell fancy pastries and apparently coffee (didn't see a menu, just the big machine). I tried the Bostock (ボストック, 432 yen), which was good but I'm still searching for double baked versions.