Cake-off: Musée du Chocolat Théobroma's San Jaunquin Dos over Viron's Baba

Not finding a new cake, I did a fourth-round cake-off for two cakes with only one win each, starting with Musée du Chocolat Théobroma, where I got their main chocolate cake, San Juaquin Dos. I wanted to test it against a new cake (for take-out), Viron's Baba. These are very different, so it's hard to choose when comparing, but I could enjoy both. In the end, I'll take the chocolate cake this time, the San Juanquin Dos. This is a milder cake than the previous JPH cake-off cake. It might be interesting to compare them some time.

You might notice that I'm now 1 cake ahead for the rest of the week, so I'm ahead, but I'm about as caught up as I'll be for the current quite fine shop list, so won't be in a big hurry the next weekend, except there's a new month coming up, so their could be new cakes. I'll be head next weekend as well but catch up the following weekend, which also won't have a day off going into it. 

Cake-off: Pierre Gagnaire's Mousse aux Chocolat et Yuzu over Musée du Chocolat Théobroma's San Juaquin Dos

It was a wet day that got wetter, so just walking during the day. Last week's cake-off was a third round against one-and-one cakes. First, before the season runs out (if there is a season) I got Mousse aux Chocolat et Yuzu again from Pierre Gagnaire. For the other cake, the rarely visited Musée du Chocolat Théobroma, which has one worthwhile cake that I've found, their signature chocolate cake, San Juaquin Dos.

Unfortunately, I'll have to admit, it turned out that I wasn't much in the mood for chocolate. Nevertheless, these were great cakes, so I did enjoy eating them. Neither is a top chocolate cake, but they each represent a type. In this case, maybe just because I was looking for something beyond chocolate, I had to go with the mousse cake. In some ways, the San Juaquin Dos is pretty plain, but it has a kind of advantage in that way, so I'm not willing to give it up. Still, with two losses, it will have to wait until next year to get it's fourth round.

Cake-off: Bien-être's Framboisier over Cacao Store (Théobroma)'s San Juaquin Dos

Thursday, having already had three weekday cakes, I ran again for cake-off research, this time to the Yoyogi area, where I had more success. Cacao Store promised to have their (actually, Théobroma's) San Juaquin Dos through Saturday. Bien-être admitted the possibility of something, but probably not Framboisier, which they had in stock at that time, but it was too late to go back to Cacao Store. 

So Friday after, after failing again elsewhere, I visited both and got the desired cakes, moving up the cake off by one day. I suspect that the Framboisier was left over from the previous day, but some cakes age better. No running Friday, just cycling. These are both pretty standard cakes, which is why I designated them great to begin with, but this time I was not convinced that San Juaquin Dos really belongs, though it is excellent as a dense chocolate cake that probably also can survive more than one day. More importantly, Bien-être had several new cakes on Friday, so I hope they will still have them when Christmas cake season ends.

Saturday I got my flu shot, so I took it easy. I still went out by bicycle to buy some chocolate for baking, take a picture Lotus, a café in Jinguumae that does cakes until 4 am, and got a Pain au Chocolat from Shibuichi Bakery. The pastry wasn't that impressive, though it was still somewhat good.

Sunday, I had repeats of cakes and no running. JPH cakes are still excellent.

Monday, I went for a long run to add a bunch of loops to my neighborhood course by doing a one-way neighborhood course run, which is taking a lot of time to update (partially because I found mistakes from last time I updated it to add loops). I don't usually try to combine photo-taking with the first such run, but I wanted to make use of the opportunity. I'm working on the path west from Roppongi Hills to connect up to loops that I previously thought I could only get to by a longer way circling around from the north. It was about 2 hours of running, plus walking and taking pictures. At L'Atelier du Pain, there just south of Roppongi Hills, I got a Pain au Chocolat. Though it's not looking so symmetric, you can see on the left that it's got proper layering and that it's well baked, so actually it was excellent. Usually I never go to Roppongi Hills, so it's not that convenient a shop, but it's at about the 1 hour mark, so next time I go out for a neighborhood run along that route, I can stop there again.

Cake-off: Cacao Store (Théobroma)'s San Juaquin Dos over Viron's Bonaparte

After more than two years, visiting Viron looking for previous great cakes finally paid off Friday, when I say that Bonaparte was brought back. I rate this as great but never did a cake-off, so that became the new priority. Prior to that, there was actually running, in the form of a one-way neighborhood run that got as far as revisiting both the Minami-Aoyama--Nishi-Azubu loop (which goes past Esola the Lab, where I got black cheesecake recently) and the connected Nishi-Azuba Northwest loop, which goes by the temple Choukoku-ji, as the main landmark, and is a neighborhood in which I've seen people out waking their (full-sized) pig on a leash a couple times. Note counting stops for stretches, it took about 68 minutes, after which I walked home. No cake or pastry, as I was banking them for the weekend.

Saturday, I did a cake-off, cycling, again resting my feet where I could. I stopped to take a few photos of, for example the entrance (since there seemed to be a guard and it's very private looking) to Central Tokyo Church of Perfect Liberty, which is a Japanese "new religious movement", started by a Zen Buddhist priest.

Viron opens early, so I went there first, choosing the Shibuya location because it aligned with my initial photography goals, and got Bonaparte, which is a chocolate cake flavored with prune. I took it home, did some other shopping, and then went out to Bien-être, where I found that they had canceled business, presumably because they were not finished with their renovations. My back up was Cacao Store, very close, where I got San Juaquin Dos (actually by Théobroma, like all their cakes), which is straight chocolate cake, pretty much, and their star attraction, seems like.

Both of these cakes involve, well, more cake than my usual choices: no caramel, mousse, cream, crunch, or nuts. My first reaction was, is just cake really great? But they convinced me of their merits over time. Initially, Viron had the edge, with its extra interesting flavor, but the Cacao Store chocolate cake, with its thick layers of ganache, won me over by the end. Next time a trip to Bien-être for a new cake fails, I know where to go.

In the afternoon, I went out again by bicycle for additional exercise and photos, covering the rest of a hatagaya--Honmachi loop for a neighborhood course (and finding a few flaws that needed fixing), as well as the rest of the north side of the Hatagaya--Motoyoyogichou--Nishihara--Tomigaya--Uehara loop, though one shrine was closed, so I would like to go back.

Lots of seasonal cakes appeared in September in the top shops, but I'm not going to sweat it, and just take them in order (of my original evaluations), so I hope that JPH's chocolate tart sticks around for October, so I can get it for a second-round cake-off.

Cacao Store (Théobroma): San Juaquin Dos

Defying the Sunday forecast that Monday was the violently hot day and the rest of the week would just true summer hot (30-35 degC), every day has been hotter than the previous this week and it looks like tomorrow is more of the same.

Nevertheless, I went running to Bien-être, where they had nothing new for me, so I headed down to Cacao Store in Tomigaya, Shibuya, where I got San Juaquin Dos, which actually comes from the Théobroma shop, which several blocks south. Now I know. Their closing hours are the same, I think, so it doesn't matter which I go to. Cacao Store is a little Bean to Bar & Chocolate Bar shop, whereas the other is an older shop on a larger scale, whatever that proves.

Anyway, in some ways this is a pretty basic chocolate cake, with high sugar glazing (to keep moisture in, of course). It was definitely excellent, and I'm really not sure how it is not as good as the best other chocolate cakes, so I'm going to call it great and put to the test, though I'm not in a hurry. However, as a cake shop, there was not much on offer there, just 3 other items (none chocolate), so I'm not sure that this shop can rise very high in the rankings. Also, I've yet to buy cake from Théobroma, so I'll have to see whether they actually have different things there (I know Théobroma has pastries, which Cacao Store doesn't).

I think I'm to try Bien-être again tomorrow, so maybe I'll find out, since the next nearest backup isn't so close and Théobroma is easily on the way. I'll go by bicycle, I think, so I might have time to get to some place that closes at 7 p.m. instead, such as 365 Days near Cacao Store, which has pastries and over 2000 photos posted on the main food rating site, so maybe I should try something; anyway, I've put it on the local neighborhood map, so I'll have to learn a new route.