Passion de Rose, Gateau Chocolat

Tuesday, I caught the last day of Passion de Rose at Isetan, so I got my third cake from this potentially quite good shop, Gateau Chocolat.

For running, I did the first 12th-level loop: the Akasaka-Azabudai-Roppongi-Toranomon loop. Covers a pretty central part of Tokyo and is big, much bigger than any of the loops it connects to: 11.2 km. It took about 130 minutes of running, and then I walked back, which is pretty intense for a workday. There was some weird things going on with my right foot, as I tried to do a rolling run instead of running on the front of my foot, to vary the stress. My outer toes really send some weird signals, like I've got a cord under them that I'm treading on. Was able to keep going to no special pain afterward. But heels were sore in the morning, but thing critical. Maybe I'll try the next 12th-level Sunday (or maybe I'll bicycle to a distant shop for recon).

This Gateau Chocolat claimed five kinds of chocolate, which I believe. There are a couple biscuit layers on the bottom and a central mousse layer, a chocolate coating and pieces of chocolate stuck in the top. It was good but didn't really add up to anything special.

Passion de Rose: Mille-Feuille Gianduja

Got my cake first. I had completely forgot that I had already posted about one cake from Passion de Rose (パッション ドゥ ローズ), also via Isetan, but that's okay, since this was a special Isetan-only cake, so I'm happy to have taken advantage of it.

The run was down to Aoyama Dori/Avenue to the Inner Moat, which I took from Mitakesaka ("three mansion hill", I think) to Boeniriguchi (with is cemetery entrance, though the pronunciation might not be right) and then back to Yotsuya. It was 10.6 km total and averaged almost 10 km/h, so now I don't have enough running budget left to be tempted to run again tomorrow. I'll go out again Wednesday and try training with a couple laps at exactly 10 km/h and a couple short 11 km/h stretches on a (reasonably) level track, though I'll probably stick to homemade cake.

The cake today was the Mille-Feuille Gianduja (ミルフィーユ ジャンドゥージャ; 679 yen), which presumably you can still get Tuesday (last day) at Isetan. The name pretty much explains it. The top filling is denser, but the fillings are are both gianduja (chocolate and hazelnuts). According to the Isetan site, one layer is gianduja buttercream and the other is crema gianduja maison (judging from the Japanese), though whose "maison", I don't know: lost in translation. I'm interested in gianduja, but not universally sold on it. The taste of very good, and I especially liked that the fillings were firm enough that you could cut through the mille-feuille layers without crushing the cake too much. I'll call this cake excellent.

Passion de Rose: Mille-Feuille Gianduja

Thursday: Passion de Rose: exotic

As planned, I went to Isetan after work and got cake from Passion de Rose, which is this week's visiting patisserie, whom I haven't posted on but have had their cake some time in the past and found it good but not exceptional. Maybe because the next day was a holiday, there was the longest line I've seen since the renovation (which is not that long) and most varieties were sold out. My best choice was this, which I think is the Exotic, for 560 yen. Supposedly, this is chocolate with passion fruit, as well as earl grey and banana. Although imported, it is hard for me to think of bananas as exotic, and I almost just left without buying anything, but I got this give them a chance to impress me. However, even though banana was mentioned last in their description, it was dominant (although I could taste the chocolate). It's a good cake, but nothing special and definitely does not convince me that I need more cakes with banana in them.