Sadaharu Aoki, Cheese Cake Fruits Rouge

Tuesday last week, I optimistically went down to Tokyo Midtown to see whether they would have a Ryoura cake on a Tuesday, which is actually crazy because the shop is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays (they didn't have any cakes a holiday Thursday morning either, so I won't try that day again). If I had researched and thought ahead, I could have saved myself a trip (which I did using 1-min intervals of walking and running, which is all I'm managing these days, but I'm working on it) and gone to Isetan, since the other purpose was to check whether Sadaharu Aoki had a particular cake that I want for a cake-off versus a seasonal JPH cake. They didn't but instead had the rare new cake, as shown. It's Cheese Cake Fruits Rouge, versus their standard citrus one. It's not a flavor I associate with cheesecake or one I seek and is mild as accents go, but actually turned out to work, so I wasn't disappointed at all. And it was the usual SA quality, so I'm fine saying it was excellent. I'm assuming that the red fruits are raspberry and cassis, as that's what was in the Noel Cheese Cake (as an online item last year). 

Now if I can just get Millefeuille Mâcha, which is still on their site as at Marunouchi, but last time I checked it was suspended due to pandemic state of emergency, maybe.

Les Cacaos, Pistache

Went out by bicycle and confirmed a couple sites I had just added to the revised loop south of Shibuya Station, then went as far out as Oyamadai to check the line-ups of a couple shops, and returned east to get cake from Les Cacaos. It's been a while, and the one great cake I've had there has been absent for several years (probably because Cuban chocolate is not so common). This time I got Pistache, which is pistachio and a high amount of cacao, supposedly. Neither made much of an impression separately or in harmonization. This is a soft (sponge) cake, but may with some sort of fruit with seeds, because there was some of that unpleasant raspberry seed feeling, though I didn't track it down. It didn't taste bad, but especially under the new rating system, I want to say that this was just ok. Les Cacaos hold on its shop group status (which I'm going to change from excellent to exceptional, in revising to avoid overlap between cake ratings and shop ratings) was weak to begin with, but I'll have to see what the competition can manage. Specifically, it and La Vie Douce were identical before this cake, so it wouldn't take much for me to swap these two shops.

Bien-être: Sicilienne

I'm getting behind again on posting, and can only partially blame it on fiddling with my neighborhood map (although I've added photographs to all but 4 places of the SE of Yotsu 3-choume Station, which is the biggest neighborhood map).

Friday night, went for a sixth cake to Bien-être, in the Yoyogi area (actually Uehara) and got Sicilienne for eating in. This was pistachio again from them, this time with cassis (black current. The bottom is a sort crunch chocolate slab. The top layers is pistachio gelatin which easily peels off. The cassis layer is a little wet and is surrounded by regular cake (somewhere between sponge and biscuit). The gelatin put me off, though it was not too bad. Actually, it was definitely good, but was more a sort of traditional sugary fruity cake than I'm very excited about, so it was somewhat disappointing. But still, definitely good, which is a step up from the previous day perfectly respectable.

Place around with finding an alternate route and repeated past mistakes then left me looping back to my starting road at one point (but further in the correct direction), so I ran 11+ km rather than the ~10 km that I could do it in by my usual route (which is not the shortest route, which I may try again now that I know that jogging through Harajuku at night is fine (it's not too crowded).

14 Juillet Tokyo: Délice Cassis Marron

Ran out to 14 Juillet Tokyo for a fifth cake, and also toured the shops of interest in the Marunouchi-Kyoubashi-Ginza area without finding anything interesting except that Frédéric Cassel still has one of their standard cakes that they just put back in their line-up, so no surprise. On the way, I saw this shop, Christa, open for the first time along the main road. I've never been there, or their incarnation under their previous unfortunate name, but they're the Neues guys, so I have them covered. Still, I should cake something from them some time just to be neighborly.

The cake, Délice Cassis Marron, was simple and cheap, which is not a bad thing. Shockingly, the cake is mostly (spongy) cake, though you can see some cassis (black currant) and marron (chestnut) layers in there. Had it with Earl Grey. It was good and I have no complaints about the quality, but my preference is toward something more decadent.