Sadaharu Aoki: Mille-feuille Vanille

Today, I ran down to Tokyo Midtown, at a 2-min running, 1-min walking, 7-8 min/km pace. My goal was to get a new flavor of kouign amann at Henri le Roux, but no change. I'll try again in a couple weeks, since I don't know their schedule. Instead, I got the Mille-feuille Vanille from Sadaharu Aoki, since I can't get it at Isetan. It's not cheap, of course, being 780 yen, and it was not really that great. It was good. It's three layers of pastry and two layers of pastry cream with no fruit. There were also pastry flakes on the side, but that's okay. The top was a hard caramel, whereas I would prefer something softer, but it doesn't make it that much more difficult to eat than it already is. As I said, it was good, but not better than that, so I am dropping them from my Great Shop list, which is down to just five: Henri le Roux, which is perfectly safe because they always have the same four cakes; Frédéric Cassel, which is one good cake from dropping off, though I've never had anything that wasn't at least excellent, but I'll want another great cake eventually to keep them; Paris S'éveille, which is in a better position as far as number of great cakes, if not physically convenient; Dalloyau, which is better on both counts; and finally Jean-Paul Hévin, which is really the one to beat and has always been my favorite.

Running was okay, but the leg is not perfect (although much better than the arm, which is the limiting factor still even in running), so I'll stick to the schedule. I got 19 km this week, 2 km at a faster 6'10'' to 7'/km pace, so next week (starting tomorrow), I want 27 km, 6 km of the faster pace. I'll also switch to about 4-min running and 1-min walking

(P.) Avranches Guesnay: Mille-Feuille Vanille

Cycled to (Patisserie) Avranches Guesnay in Bunkyo-ku. I was worried that it would be too crowded an area to park a bicycle, but the shop is between exits for Kasuga, so most of the subway traffic doesn't need to walk past.  

I got the Mille-Feuille Vanille for 605 yen, as this was the only one marked as "recommendation". Being a standard cake, it's hard for it to be great, but on the other hand, it's something that I like, so I'm not likely to rate it low. I struggled between rating it good and excellent, which looking at previously posts on mille-feuille did not much help with except that this was definitely better than Fraoula's good mille-feuille, which was the kind where only flakes are used rather than whole biscuits, making it easy to eat but without a main feature. Since this is a newly visited shop for me, I decided to call the cake excellent, and thus tentatively the shop, and visit them again soon. The picture didn't turn out so great; not sure why it's zoomed in so much.

It was short trip, so I swung through Ginza on the way back and verified where I could park and walked down to Tokyu Plaza Ginza in order to verify that Esquisse Cinq has takeout cake, as reported by Sweet Sonobe. I know the café is really expensive, so I gave up going there unless the cake turns out to be really good (in which case, I could go for my birthday). The takeout is also expensive and limited, but I'll probably still some time. A better choice for me for a café would be Cacao Market by Mariebelle (Hinka Rinka 3rd), which was empty around noon on the holiday.