Pierre Marcolini: Marcolini Chocolate Gateau

On Jan 3rd, finally got over to my next target café for two, the main Pierre Marcolini in Ginza. My interest was only in the cake, which they call Marcolini Chocolate Gateau. It's a café dessert, but one could image whipped cream sold on the side, so I'm going to go ahead and list it with other cakes. It was excellent, as a quite dense moist cake. I ordered it with the Marcolini Cacao Tea, which was interesting but I got tired of pretty quickly, so I can't recommend more than a taste.

For completeness the other dessert was the Marcolini Brussels Waffle, seasonal Cacao flavor. As it happens, ice cream and waffles doesn't work for me. I should of recommend the parfait. Actually, I had their vanilla soft-serve ice cream the day before in Shinjuku, and it was excellent.

Running, over a few days. I did a couple neighborhood course "clumps" of loops, the Suga-chou clump and the Soka Gakkai clump, which covers the neighborhood course between Yotsu 3-choume, Yotsu, and Shinnomachi stations, which only adds up to about 5 km.

For new loops, I finished off the Aobadai central loop, which gives access to both directions and sides of the Meguro River around Nanakameguro Station. I also completed the Ebisu 4 loop (two different days), which gives gives further access to loops leading up to immediately east of Meguro Station before dead-ending.

Toshi Yoroizuka Tokyo: Caramel Flambé

No running Saturday and café dessert rather than the usual fresh cake, but still worth mentioning, since this is a cake brand whose shops I've visited frequently and think are excellent. Their Tokyo Midtown shop is nearest, but this one is also convenient to many things and quite spacious. We each got the Grand Menu, which at 3000 yen was surprisingly cheap for this level of service, food, and atmosphere, although they were not so busy (the whole Kyobashi Station area was not that busy, though there were still plenty of people around, just not so many compared to nearby Tokyo Station or Ginza, I assume). The Grand Menu comprises three courses: the "side dish", which is chocolates, sauce, and fruit, a plate of strawberry risotto (not shown), and a main desert. I choose the Caramel Flambé. The other is gorgonzola and pistachio, I think, but I don't remember the name.

The chocolate plate was excellent. The sauces are raspberry and some citrus, that I did not catch the name, though they might not have been any more specific that that.

I didn't take a picture of the strawberry risotto, since it's pretty far from what I usually blog about and I don't photograph everything I eat, but I probably should have in this case, since it was also quite excellent, very creamy, and a unique experience that I recommend. On what to me is a trivial note but does relate to the quality through the direct attention of the proprietor,  apparently the one preparing the strawberry risotto in front of us (it's set up as a bar) was the Grand Patissier himself, Toshi Yoroizuka, who has celebrity status outside the culinary field from being a widower of an actress.

The Caramel Flambé was great, as well as being highly in keeping with my bias, which is why I choose it. The tart was pretty unstable once I cut into it, so I finished off the ice cream relatively early. Otherwise, it was a nice combination or caramel flavors, as well as being photogenic (this gets featured on advertisements), though the overlap between my tea cup and whatever those sheets sticking up out of the ice cream are has spoiled that part.

I won't try to judge the other dish, since I didn't have that much of it and it is mostly ice cream, which doesn't interest me much, but yet another example of the fine plates.

Thursday: Jean-Paul Hévin, Choco Passion

Last day of Golden Week holidays was shopping. Fortunately, we went by the chocolate bar just when we wanted to rest and it was nearly empty. I ordered the Choco Passion cake, which I had completely forgotten I had had until I saw it. Fortunately, it is great for 647 yen. Obviously, it is chocolate cake flavored with passion fruit, but also rum-flavored ganache and feuillantine for crunch. Not sure what the nuts on top are.

I also got the Nectar of the Day which was passion fruit, which was ultimately too sweet. Should have gone for tea.

The other order was Apéro Gourmand "Affogato", which is chocolate ice cream with apricot sauce/nectar for 1,322 yen. Not my thing, but it's good.