Presqu'île Chocolaterie, Ruby

I took advantage of Presqu'île Chocolaterie being at Isetan to pick up a 4th cake from them, which is my goal for the 48 shops in my quite fine category. Ruby chocolate is still rare, and it can be great, so I went with their Ruby, though it's closest relative is probably Mure, which was my least favorite of theirs at the time. Nevertheless, it turned out well, as this was excellent, which means it will make the next cut (32 shops is the target number for this category, but just 3 cakes wasn't enough to make that fine a division). Besides being ruby chocolate with the traditional raspberry addition, the center is lychee liquor marinated grapefruit in lychee cream. It works. These days, I'm working late and doing more indoor exercises, though I still got in some running (not that I can remember now whether it was a 30-min or 45-min day).

  

Jean-Paul Hévin, Verrine Framboise Litchi

As with other cakes last Sunday, the evaluation is based on half, in this case of something that is pretty small to begin with. This is Jean-Paul Hévin, again from Ginza Mitsukoshi (I was busy, and bought everything in one go) chocolate mousse with raspberry and lychee: Verrine Framboise Litchi. I can that it was excellent, keeping in mind that it's a verrine, so only marginally cake. Nevertheless, it holds of the standard of JPH.

I'll insert here, that there was running, probably in the neighborhood. I'm mostly abandoned my old neighborhood maps for the time, or at least the routes, as I try to great more reasonal paths, plus I worked late most days, so I had less than am hour run. Mostly I ran in the Yotsuya San-choume Sta. south areas, either along a path connecting up the 4 cake shops or the top site course, that includes whatever I judge the most worth visiting in each neighborhood, down to the choume level, which includes some but not all the cake shops. I'm still refining the course, and have it down to the part north of and immediately north of Sendagaya wrapping around to the extreme southeast of Shinjuku Sta., and I've identified the sites down through Jinguumae, but not completely gotten the course yet.

Jean-Paul Hévin: Verrine Mésange, Verrine Chocolat Coco Framboise, Verrine Mascarpone Café

It took me a while to remember at least somewhat what I did on Wednesday, but I'm finally there. I got some sesame bread from Andersen for eat with olive oil. This was different from their Trekonbrod and the name was completely Japaneses (though using "pan" as the word for bread). It was good, but I didn't bother to take a picture. I was at Isetan for another errand, which I forgot to do, though I verified what the next two visiting shops are (both worth visiting, but I'm up to date on both), and saw that Sadaharu Aoki has a very promising tart for just this month at Isetan. The more important errands on the way home I did not forget. For running, I may have tried to do the revised southern Cat Street loop (and failed very early on), as I think I did the revised Jinguumae central loop (which covers northern Cat Street) counterclockwise on Monday and forget to record it.

In any case, Thursday, I definitely tried to do the southern Cat Street again and realized that my route was flawed, so I've had to revise it. I also failed to get food at Steamers for the good reason that their shops close at 6 pm, so I'll have to hit them on a holiday. Instead, I got a croissant from Natural Lawson, which I've added to routes and on the grounds that they have fresh pastries. The croissant was not special but it was not worse than an average bakery one and definitely better than some, so I'm happy to keep them on my routes. There are not that many of them and I'm not sure that I've found any that the route was not already going by for the neighborhoods covered.  They have eat-in space, which is an advantage over most bakeries, though the atmosphere is what you would expect from a convenience store.

Friday through Sunday I was busy, but I was indulged. Friday night, I sampled all three of the new verrine from Jean-Paul Hévin, though I failed to take a picture. I was busy. If you hurry, I you catch them on the website. These were Verrine Mésange, Verrine Chocolat Coco Framboise, and Verrine Mascarpone Café. The first is Peruvian chocolate mousse, matcha Mousse, and passion fruit gelatin and was not really very exciting, but good. The second is chocolate mousse and coconut mousse with raspberry and lychee gelatin in between again good but not exciting (particularly the coconut mousse). The last is basically a verrine version of tiramisu, but the mascarpone mousse and coco powder is really excellent; I would prefer it without the coffee, but it didn't make me sick, so I'll overlook that. I'm hoping for a different version without the coffee if are more verrine at the end of the summer, but I'm expected to be disappointed.

Michalak, Monak Pablova

Intended to do a short run and got sucked into a long run after starting the day thinking I should really rest, as my feet were hurting in the morning, but the lure of the road called me (and my feet felt fine). I was practicing my minor deviation of my Jinguumae central loop, which covers the north end of Cat Street to the Jinguumae shopping street and looping around to Michalak to get the last available type of fresh cake for this exceptional shop. This is the Monak Pablova, which is a take out cake consisting of a shell and filling. There was space inside, so I stayed in. This is the cheapest of the ones of this type listed on the web site and the only one I've see lately (now is jar dessert season). Actually, the other two are listed under cakes rather than take-out, which confuses me, but they are all called Monak. The Monak Pablova is lime meringue (also, they put some freshly grated lime peel on top) with raspberry confit and lychee cream. It's take out because it will dissolve if you don't eat in within 30 minutes, they said. It was good, but not enough to make me impatient to try a different flavor of these (pear-yuzu and chocolate-hazelnut are listed on the website). I might have to wait until fall to get new regular cakes, assuming they'll have new ones.

While eating in, I looked at Facebook and saw that Bien-être's mille-feuille had gone American cherry, so I need to run over there to confirm that so had the pistachio chiboust. I was able to make it in time and did confirm. They were semi-confident that they would have it for another week or two. I'm busy this weekend, but I might try serving one early next week any getting a cake from Isetan for a mid-week second-round cake-off, probably with a Michalak cake, though I have one other possibility at Shinjuku Station for a backup. If that works, and I want it, I can do a third round the following weekend, though I'm not sure ahead of time what the availability will be (the opponent would be either FC's Choux Vanille or ABVT's Marjolaine, depending on whether the chiboust loses or wins.

Because the actual run was intended to be shorter, rather than try to do 11 intervals of 4 minutes running, I made the intervals 5 min with the additional 30 s intervals for warm up and a semi-dash, but the deviation to visit Bien-être had me reach 40 minutes of running before I finished, so I walked after 8 intervals. Still haven't decided what I'll do tomorrow. It's rain every day in varying amounts, but I'll rest either Tuesday or Wednesday and am busy Thursday and the weekend, but maybe I'll squeeze some running on nearby local loops.

Ces Jours, Aroma [updated]

To change things up, I went back to hitting a shop on my quite great list, though I'm still adding new ones faster than I'm ticking off ones with three net cakes. There are a lot of local ones and ones I can hit weekdays, so maybe I'll do one next week, though I'm conflicted about hitting JPH again. Anyway, the long planned trip to Ces Jours was finally carried out. It was about a 70-minute each way.

I went for Aroma, as the type of cake I like, but it was a poor choice for transporting by bicycle. I'm skeptical about the design, though, as the top half is jell, with nothing keeping it on, so I'm not sure that a long return by train would have completely saved it. It's lychee, rose, and raspberry, well balanced. Inside is lychee comport, which works well. The texture is somewhat limited, but reasonable (the outside shell of the bottom gives a little crunch, I forget from what kind of nuts, so let's say pistachio, which would go with the flavor). This was definitely at least definitely good, but I was conflicted about whether it is excellent, based on what I perceive as its relative design flaws. In the end, I decided to just split the difference and call it semi-excellent, which isn't enough to keep it in the quite good shops, though it will be able to keep a position in the next lower rank (currently good), when I have to split it due to too many shops (its already 36 over the target 64 and I need to demote another 26 from quite good, but even including the latter, I don't have a full 64 that are obviously above the minimum and get second cakes from the just good shops with one cake isn't going to be a project I'm going to start any time soon). Still, it's been a little over 3 years since I've been there anyway, and with 3 cakes, don't to have need to visit them again: just too many shops in Tokyo.

L'Abricotier: Sisile

Since I was free Sunday, I wanted to go somewhere I could not get elsewhere, even if it is a little out of order, so I went to L'Abricotier in Nakano-ku and got the Sisile (Sicile?), which I saw last time I was there and wanted to try. This time, I was tempted to get their Mont-Blanc, just because they make it for you special (from 11:00) and you're suppose to eat it without an hour, which makes it sound more like a café desert than take-out cake. Anyway, I got the Sisile, and I'm glad that I did. The green is pistachio, obviously from the name, and inside are both raspberry mousse and lychee mousse. I like this structure of cake and the tastes all went together. Not sure how it would stand up against great like such as I had yesterday, but I think it deserves the chance to try, so I'll say that it's great.

The afternoon was more pictures for the seventh neighborhood course, which I've already changed significantly: I'm going to have to relearn the last four courses. Lots of walking yesterday and today (some running today, just where convenient; the cake was actually by bicycle and I ate in), so some muscles are unexpectedly sore.

Pierre Hermé: Ispahan

I should perhaps have taken a day off cake to make up for two pieces yesterday (Sunday's failed cake-off), but I'm going to do that Tuesday, when my main department store sources are closed (Isetan and Mitsukoshi) for a summer holiday. Instead, I wanted to get in a cake for my new "Quite Superb" shop Pierre Hermé. It was a tough choice between a cake I had been putting off for a long time and type of cake that I barely recognized as cake (cream puffs) and I went with the former. First, though I visited Pierre Gagnaire to see if they had their chocolate tart from March for a future cake-off, but they didn't.

Coming back, I did the second half of the Shinjuku History and Culture course in reverse, which for all the times I've done this stretch, I think I've never done. It was actually maybe better, in terms of the timing of lights, and the variation in which hills were up and which were down was interesting (much steeper slopes than what I've been calling training hill running, although with some space between them). It's about 6 km (just for the H&C course) in under 40 min, which is pretty good for the up-down. Also, I could run along the embankment overlooking Yotsuya Station (not sure why the embankment is there, but maybe it's related to the old outer defense wall for Edo).

The Ispahan is a traditional cake, apparently, or at least Dalloyau is not the only place that has it. It's a big macaron with lychee on the inside and raspberry on the outside, as well as a little cream to cement things in place. I'd like more cream and less fruit, but I respect it and so I'm going to say it's excellent (also, it's beautiful). I tried cutting it with a knife and eating it with a fork but if I ever get it again, I'd rather just pick it up so that I can more easily get a balance of all the elements, which I think is best.

Hill running and Libertable: Dahlia (updated)

Today I did hills. Yesterday, I just did not want to move and wondered why I run at the beginning, which went away after less than 2 km. Today the knees were sore from the beginning, but got fine pretty quick. I ran through the regular neighborhood ringed by Yotsu Sanchome, Yotsu, Akasakamitsuke, and Shinanomachi stations. Instead trying to add hills, I just did some loops to use the ones I like more. Seemed to work.

Went to Libertable for cake. Despite being right on my usual path, I've only got cake there twice before. Both times, it was high-quality cake that I never want to have again. The first was Luxe, which is chocolate mousse with black truffles; very interesting, and I'm not sorry that I tried it, but it's not for me. The second was Robuste, with is a disk on edge, with hazelnut praline, chocolate, and almond, but the banana and passion fruit inside did not really do it for me (bananas are for breakfast to me, not for my cake, although I've got my eye on a rum, banana, custard tart recipe). This time I was going for the Zenith, figuring if I didn't like that, then I'd call it quits for them (although it's been at least a year anyway). That was not there at 8:30 or so; they are open until 9 pm, which is great, and they had multiple customers in front of me and a lot of people were coming down from the big, obvious rich shrine across the street, whose well-lit, tall, high-quality stone stairs I selfishly ran up and down a couple times, though mostly by the side paths, not the main stairs which bridges a road and has an escalator beside it, though I don't know why. Is there a beer hall up there? It was mostly guys in suits, although since the other side is government buildings, maybe there's a path that's more convenient than walking around.

What I actually got was this:

which is chocolate mousse, raspberry ganache, and lychee cream, called Dahlia (ダリア), which I think is 669 yen. The outer fruit coating is about the right consistency, not too sticky and the inside lychee cream, though lacking a distinct taste, balances the mousse. This was not wow-this-is-great good, but well balanced and excellent quality. Still not sure whether Libertable is a great cake shop, but it's in the running. It's got the ambiance and prices, and it is convenient enough that I'll try again..