(Saturday) Maison g Tokyo: Pistache Fraise and Waguri Mont-Blanc

There were a couple cakes that we didn't get yesterday at Isetan from Maison g Tokyo (patisserie for Meguro Gajoen) that there was still interest in today, so we got them rather than stand in line at Jean-Paul Hévin for expensive special-event cake (which I was interested as a eat-in experience, but now the chocolate bar has been converted to to make space for Valentine's chocolate season, as happens every year). The cakes are Pistache Fraise and Waguri Mont-Blanc, so a probably white chocolate and pistachio mousse (with sufficient gelatin) around some strawberry part with some nice whole pistachios and a strawberry, and a Japanese chestnut Mont-Blanc with a meringue base and a whole chestnut inside. Both were good, but not better than that. After five cakes and nothing great and a couple only good ones, I may never get down to the actual Hotel in Meguro, though definitely good.

Maison g Tokyo: Fromage Cru and Manjari

Had some time in the middle of the day, so I wanted to do a training run of two laps around the imperial moat course at 11.0 km/h, but was still feeling tired from yesterday's run (when I was still tired from the day before's sprints). It ended up being one lap (5 km) at 12.0 km/h, just barely (by a few seconds seconds). I got 30 seconds ahead early on (from the 3.5 km), on the downhill part and need them on the back end.

For cake, I visited Isetan again and took advantage of Maison g Tokyo's special cakes (so many, that I'm suspecting the actual shop has a small selection). These were their Fromage Cru and Manjari (for 540 and 648 yen). The first is rare cheese cake, and had a thin fruit layer that looked like fig, though I couldn't tell. The other is named for chocolate of the famous brand Vorhona and was chocolate mousse, cream, and buiscuit (I think; the memory is fading) that was raspberry flavored, but much better balanced than my recent macaron ganache. Both of these were excellent, I think. Sorry for the shadow; I was in a hurry, as I was also heating water for coffee and tea (I didn't each two pieces alone).

So finally I have another candidate shop for the "excellent" Tokyo Patisserie list that could stay past the first cake (which I'm willing to accept, though I had been going for getting three cakes each). Still need Octobre or 14 Juillet Tokyo to pan out to really have 30 excellent shops from which I can select about 10 to be my third-tier Tokyo cake shops, after "supreme" and "superb".

Wednesday: Maison g Tokyo [Meguro Gajoen]: Sicilian

I'm behind, as I've been busy, including making macarons yesterday, including both the shells and the ganache filling. My ganache recipe didn't work out well, and the macarons were still not perfect. I should work on some other recipes next time.

The run was 15.0 km/h sprints, actually. I had thought I could manage 200 m, since I had gotten close on 300 m when doing 13.0 km/h intervals, but I messed up my chronometer on the first one and then the second was 0.22 s too slow (actually one was 225 m, because it's the last part of the course). That's within my error on self-timing, but I want to clearly make the goal, so I switched to 100 m sprints. That I could do, but all (six) of them came out 16 km/h, with two actually reaching 16.0 km/h. After that training run, I went down to Tokyo Midtown (at about 10 km/h) to confirm something and then back to Lawson 100 for groceries.. So about 6 km around 10 km/h about 1 km around 15 km/h.

I had already gotten my cake from the visiting Isetan counter, which is called maison g Tokyo, but is part of Meguro Gajoen, a wedding ceremon, complex, I think, so I'm not sure how welcome I would be if I show up down there sweaty, but we'll see. I got what they said was the specialty, and they use a picture of it on the Meguro Gajoen for the link to the cake shop, though aren't featuring it there. This is the Sicilian, which used pistachios and almonds, so definitely my kind of cake. Because of that, I'm not sure whether my finding it excellent says much about the quality of the shop, but is see when I follow up.