Ryoura, Marquise

Saturday, as well as the Mont-Blanc for the cake-off, I bought a second cake at Ryoura for efficiency/social distancing's sake, since I expected getting more cakes from Ryoura, a quite exceptional shop, would be the next thing, since I was about to catch up on exceptional shops. However, the demotion of the Mont-Blanc actually meant that Ryoura was at the bottom of the quite exceptional group and likely to get replaced by one of two up-and-comers, so the 19th new cake is maybe several years ahead of its time, or at least I'll have to consider carefully after the next cake-off win whether the reward has already been given, but that's not likely to be until next year until the caramel salt tart finally returns: I'll have to watch for hints online, since I don't expect to get out that way.

Last time I went with a variation of a cake I've had before, so this time I choose something I definitely not had, Marquise, which is white peach flavored and, I was warned, has alcohol. The flavor was nice, but as the shape suggests, this requires a good amount of gelatin to maintain form and the resulting texture didn't agree with me, though I've had similar cakes that were excellent. In this cake, good as the best I'm willing to say, but I can certainly imagine someone else appreciating this cake more, as it is well made.

Fiorentina Pastry Boutique: Marquise

Decided that consecutive training days is no fun, so I'm not going to do that. Fortunately, I wanted to get back to Fiorentina Pastry Boutique, which is close, so I did a leisurely run, just 10 km/h for only about 7 km round trip. The cake was Marquise　（マラキューズ; 594 yen), which is chocolate sponge with chocolate ganache. It was definitely good, but not groundbreaking, which is sort of the best you can expect from a Hotel patisserie, which is reasonable. They pretty need to be noncontroversial and cover the basics. However, they should know not to try to stabilize a cake for transport by taping a support to the loose napkin under it. Still, it survived reasonably well, considering.

(Friday) Ginza loop to Marquise: Rurien

This run was fine. This was to the sound part of Ginza to a shop I have not visited before called (Ginza) Marquise. I verified that the leaves are in the middle of turning colors in Meiji Gingu Gaien and otherwise it was an okay run. Still a little sore in the same place, which is annoying. Did not try anything fancy, but too the short route back, which took me through demonstrators/proselytizers when I was about to swing by the Diet Building, but I'm not sure who. They wanted to give me their newspaper and I was stuck at a long light, so I let them talk to me a little. Apparently, someone predicted there would be wars all over the world (good guess, for any moment), so we should revere him or something. I'm guessing that it is just as well that mostly I did understand them. They were two elderly women, so I'm guessing not something too new age. Got my flu shot the next day, so no running for a couple days (they tell you one day of no heavy exercise, but I've had problems before, so I need to take it easy at least 48 hours). Hope to get some other cake this weekend, though.

At Marquise, I got the ルリアン ("Rurian"/"Lulian", although I don't think the actual Latin spelling was either; update: it was double Rs but I think "Rurien") which sounds the same as the J-Pop girl group the Le Lien, so couldn't get a match Googling. The shop homepage and Facebook page don't list it, and no one has posted a picture to Tabelog for that shop, so this does not seem to be a standard or something that they promote. I thought at the time that it would be the best compromise for sharing, but maybe I should have gone with the hazelnut one, which would be my choice for eating by myself. It was 650 yen, which did not surprise me for Ginza, and my memory of the card is that it has cassis mousse and orange somewhere, maybe in the dark cake. It looks good and does not taste bad, but is bland. Didn't care for the level of gelatin for the top part, but would have forgiven that if there had been more flavor. So I'm just going to mark it as of no special interest, even though it would be convenient. Eventually, I'll probably run out of other places to go (or want cake really late), but I expect it will be a while before I bother to go back. Not a huge selection to begin with.

1 h jogging and Jean-Paul Hévin

Didn't have a lot of time, so thought I was going to take a quick jog to a new place, but couldn't confirm the location beforehand and didn't find it or want to spend more time looking, so I stopped at Jean-Paul Hévin on the way back. Unfortunately, that didn't work out great either.

Today I got tｗo seasonal cakes, the Mont-Noir and the Marquise for 674 and 618 yen, respectively. The Mont-Noir is a Mont-Blanc with cassis gelatin mixed with the chestnut cream and whipped cream, giving it a purple look. It's sprinkled with chocolate and chestnut power. The base crust is the same great one as the Mont-Blanc, almond meringue, very airy. This is good, but not as good as the Mont-Blanc, I'm told by someone who better appreciates this variety. The Marquise has a hazelnut flavored crust, which is as far as I had read at the store (there is a line outside and I want to try everything anyway). However, if I'd read further, I would have found out that it has coffee (that would have been a deal-killer) and cognac, and chocolate one assumes. Didn't notice that it was coffee when I ate it but did notice that it was not great, although not actually bad, just not something I need.