Frédéric Cassel, Pavlova Fraise

I had the afternoon off, so after a little running (about 1 km, which is the most I'm trying in a given day), I did a long walk to Ginza, which I got a new cake from Frédéric Cassel in response to their cake-off win. I got Pavlova Fraise, the first pavlova I've had from them. Best guess as this will become the new base cake for the monthly theme. Compare to other pavlova, they went light on the meringue, which is reasonable, and more healthy. Instead, it featured more cream, which they say leans toward cheese, which I could see. The fruit is strawberry compote with a hint of balsamic vinegar, so that's new in my ingredients labels. I'll say that it was excellent and look forward to other flavors, if this is a series.

(Café) Le Pommier, Mont-Blanc

I'm probably not going to catch before the weekend, but last Sunday I hit a couple local shops. Imperfect is a chocolate shop that's gotten out of the cream puff business, so they no longer have anything that qualifies as fresh cake. Next in that neighborhood was (Café) Le Pommier, from which I got a Mont-blanc. I'd probably have a bigger selection if I went to one of the regular shops, but I was only looking for a fourth cake, so this seemed good enough. It's got the meringue-type base but the unusual feature is a chocolate coating. That's not a bad idea, but wasn't really making this special. Still a good cake, but probably not enough to keep this shop in the quite fine category. 

Viron, Gourmand

Got a second cake ahead when Viron had their other new came available Friday. This is the Gourmand (I think), and besides nuts it's meringue. It might actually be all meringue, just with different nut additives. It's certainly quite dry, making it quite light, and quite decadent, in keeping with the name. No complaints about any of that, as it was excellent. 

Yu Sasage, Montélimar Noisette

Took a half day off and didn't accomplish many things. That's normal, but I actually did try and did accomplish a few things, as the list of things is pretty long now. However, especially because I mistook the Sadaharu Aoki schedule (there was a new cake today, but only in Nagoya, which gets special treatment from JPH as well), I did go for cake, by bicycle. Yu Sasage is along the borderline between the exceptional and quite exceptional shops and was in line for a cake to try to make the jump. There were a couple promising new cakes, the other a chiboust, but I went with the Montélimar Noisette, which was explained as having Montélimar mousse, which I didn't find informative, since Montélimar is a place name, though I guess I new it was associated with honey. Actually, they were using it to mean honey meringue, which I'll have to try to remember and confirm that as tracking with what other shops mean. Other components are, obviously, hazelnuts, in mousse form, as well as dacquoise. It was definitely good, but is maybe too small and light a cake for me. This might be a case were some fruit would help.

 

Viron, Tarte au Citron

As a weekday destination, Viron in Shibuya is pretty reliable about not running out of cake, though actually I went in the morning. This was the second-to-last of a long run of mornings off to use up my expiring paid holidays. In response to a disappointing lemon tart/pie over the weekend, it was natural to hit Viron for the Tarte au Citron. This seems so traditional for them that's surprising that I haven't had it before, though that's probably because tarts were low on my priority list. This has meringue on top, naturally, and is excellent, thankfully. 

Paris S'éveille, Verrine Provençal

Third Friday of Auguest, I went down to Jiyuugaoka to visit Paris S'éveille again, this time not by bicycle, so I was able return with a reasonable similarity to what I bought. This was the last of the current new cakes, if one allows this kind of class dessert as cake. Note that it has meringue cubes on top, which is enough to make it at least as much cake as some non-glass desserts. The name is Verrine Provençal, but I can't hang onto the ingredients long enough, even have having already visit again once and looking. I'm thinking jasmine, but maybe just because that was in the JPH verrine last month. Regardless, this is definitely excellent, perhaps the best verrine I've had from anywhere. I'm looking forward to the next batch of new cakes, though this still continues into the first weekend of September, at least.

En Vedette, Meringue Chantilly

In the evening of Saturday, I went out to do a neighborhood run for the Nezu Fine Arts Museum clump, which comprises the just revised Minami-Aoyama--Nishi-Azabu south loop, which I did my first clockwise run of, and the tiny Nishi-Azabu 1 north loop, which requires a long run through Aoyama Cemetery, a pretty popular running a bicycling route with a slope. With dinner I actually had a third cake (no holidays this week and I have a lot of priority shops, so I'm working), but I forgot to take a picture. It was Meringue Chantilly, and it looked like the last one I had, except there were some tiny blue/black berries of some sort and the whipped cream was caramel flavored. It's a basic desert and good, but not beyond that. En Vedette needs at least one excellent cake in the next two be able to get promoted at this point, and the choices are getting slim, which is how I ended up with Meringue Chantilly this time.

En Vedette, Mont-blanc

Monday of last week, I had lunch at Isetan and could make buy cake in the middle of the day on a workday (and in fact would be the only such cake during the week). En Vedette was visiting, so I took advantage of the opportunity to buy their Mont-blanc. This is the usual whipped cream under chestnut paste arranged horizontally between two meringue disks, which makes for a high meringue to cream and chestnut, and a rather sweet cake, which suits me, especially for something that get verge on bitter like chestnut. In fact, I want to have it again, which is another way of saying that it was great. This puts En Vedette on a path to challenge the category above, quite exceptional shops, though this third great cake probably isn't going to be enough to take it all the way, even if it stands up under testing.

Lenôtre, Feuille d'Automne Rouge

Tuesday, I failed again to get cake at Sadaharu Aoki, but reserved a piece to guarantee on Wednesday (as long as work didn't run too long). So once again I ran to Ginza, this time for Mitsukoshi and a cake for winning a cake-off. Since the winner was Feuille d'Automne, it seemed reasonable to get the Feuille d'Automne Rouge from Lenôtre, which is a raspberry version for Christmas. Ran both ways, this time, just to get home earlier, as I still had the indoor workout with weights to do.

As it happens, adding raspberry was in no way a bad idea, and this was a second new great cake in two days, as I had hoped. Both are seasonal, so I know what the next cake-off should be, since I don't have any other pairs of undefeated cakes ready to go. Guess I know where I'll go next Tuesday: Isetan (where Lenôtre is visiting for the week, or at least I assume that it's the regular week, though I better check, as Christmas disrupts the usual schedule).

Noix de Beurre: Meringue Chantilly

Today was no running due to having gotten a flu shot, so to reward myself for not running when I shouldn't (or really, because it was somewhere I could go with minimal effort), I visited another quite fine shop which I've had just one great cake from, Noix de Beurre, at Isetan. This time I got Meringue Chantilly, which is exactly what the name says and it looks like: meringue with whipped cream. The center meringue is actually dense (and took some work to get through, but the outside part is light enough as a guide). It's good (and cheap) but not enough to convince me that this shop needs to be promoted. I've got room to promote two shops, and one might be Coffee Parlor Hill Top (when and if they reopen in December), but there's a three-way tie even after that.

Lenôtre, Feuille d'Automne

Wanted to get back home earlier and get some stuff done (which mostly I didn't and most of what I did, I didn't need to), so I went by bicycle, which also allowed my feet to run after two days in a row following more than a week of no running. Since the first cake from a new shop was great, I went back to Lenôtre at Ginza Mitsukoshi. My first choice as the second cake was Plaisir, which is like a Saint-mark, I think, but it was sold out, so I went with my next choice, which was Feuille d'Automne. This seems to be their specialty and the only reason it wasn't my second choice, was that it looked the most chocolaty, and the first cake was their straight chocolate cake (since today's wasn't available then), but actually each other cake has their different take on chocolate. This was was meringue (as a core) and chocolate, where as the other two are caramel and chocolate and (Plaisir) vanilla and milk chocolate. Anyway, this is a great cake, comparable to chocolate and meringue cakes from JPH, my top pick, so Lenôtre looks to rocket up the cake chart, as it were, though I think they have 8 things that qualify as fresh cake right now, including the verrine (which I probably will have to in their case). It looks like in the short run, I'm going to be visiting the same few shops for a while, but I need to get over to Toshi Yoroizuka, maybe weekend after next, but the Annya is in for a third-round cake-off, maybe against the loser of this weekend's second-round cake-off (since Annya is one and one).

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.

Ryoura, Baron

Took the afternoon off, but a typhoon was coming, so I limited how much I was out. I had more errands to do at 4 pm, but there was some rain in the air and it has been somewhat windy all day, so decided I didn't want a long ride and gave up on more important matters after returning with cake. If the typhoon doesn't blow through quick, tomorrow's commute is going to be uncomfortable.

I went to Ryoura between lunches to finally catch up on visiting shops with cake-off wins. I spent a long time choosing, making sure to get something new. I got the Baron, which I must have considered before and regretted passing up, but there are definitely no tags for it, so it must be new. This is dried fruit in meringue, so the former made me think of Christmas fruitcake, but I prefer meringue to most demi-sec cake. Definitely good.

Speaking of cake-offs,  Bigarreaux is back to not making Le Plaisir, so it looks like I'll be back to L'Abricotier this weekend for Cicilien Figue as the competitor in the third-round losers bracket.

Luciole: J'aime, Paris-Brest, & Gateau Meringue

Gateau Meringue

On day 6 of GW, I got cake from Luciole, which is a shop at the Hotel Piena in Kobe, as takeout. I don't recognize the name of the shop, though I've gotten cake from this location before, just the hotel name. Anyway, it's pretty big as a café space, since it might also be the hotel's breakfast space. However, they have a problem with takeout, in that they give you a huge box in a huge bag, which provides some stability, but the protection of the cakes within the box is completely inadequate.

Paris-Brest

There were one centimeter high paper walls to separate cakes, which did nothing to keep the tall, delicate meringue cake (above from their website) from falling over, even with fairly careful handling. I thought I told them something strange last time I ordered at that location that made them just leave the cakes loose inside (and maybe I did), but this time all the blame is on them. That said, the cake was good, better than average from places I've sampled in Kobe when I was sampling for essentially everywhere (which I don't do in Tokyo very widely these days). The Gateau Meringue was still good, but it's just meringue, white chocolate, and some berries in a decorative package. The Paris-Brest had an unusual pastry, not the usual choux pastry, but maybe the soft version used for Japanese-style choux cream. It was good, but I like a much more decadent style.

The final one, J'aime, is pistachio over chocolate. It is much airier/spongier that other dome cakes I have had, which one should guess from the air bubbles, again (like the previous day's) seemingly in keeping with a local style. It also was good and well balanced, but the texture was boringly soft.

Michalak: Mont-Blanc

On the second day of GW, we got a couple cakes, one new to me, from the Michalak counter at Isetan, at my recommendation (next time is already been decided). The new cake was the Mont-Blanc, which I had most of, but am not completely sure how delicious it was, so I'm going with "great" just to get another chance at it (once I find a couple great cakes from some other shops). It's definitely the kind I like, not being very heavy. Actually, the middle seemed emptier than I expected, though the meringue broke irregularly, so maybe I just ate to greedily to notice.

Jean-Paul Hévin, Longchamp Chocolat

Sunday, I finally did it, I ran, as a one-way neighborhood course run, the giant Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Komaba--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Oohara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop, which was 35.2 km long, plus enough lead up to make it a marathon+ distance, so a massive addition to the route, though I'm not confident that I'll ever get it memorized. Along the way, I verified some new sites, so already I've split off part, but the loops are always evolving. No problem with my feet, by keeping it pretty slow, though it was so slow, and my knowledge of the route is so poor, that I almost wore out my battery (also I took about dozen pictures), so next time I do this kind of route, it better either be simpler or I should memorize more of it.

Besides some candies from Iwate and Calorie Balance cookies, I had one Pain au Chocolat from Asterisque. As usual quite a wait, though not enough to explain the 6 km/h average time. Better that that body damage, though. Still, I'll rest tomorrow from running, I hope, and get caught up on cleaning and email.

For cake, I finally got the Longchamp Chocolat from Jean-Paul Hévin at Isetan. Even around 2 pm when I got there (I started at 6:20 for the running), they had several. Hope the same is true tomorrow, because I want to do a quick turnaround on cake-offs, because this was great, as expected, totally decadent, with chocolate, meringue, both almond and just pure sugar and egg, I think. It's hard chocolate, but I don't know how it compares to the Longchamp Chocolat Noir.

Franzè & Evans London, Yuzu Meringue Tart

Thursday, I made my first attempt to obtain JPH's new Longchamp Chocolat, which is dark chocolate accented by pistachio in the coating. No luck at Isetan, but it was only its second day. For running, I went out for about an hour and did the planned running of neighborhood course loops, confirming my knowledge of the Kita-Aoyama central and Mianmi-Aoyama north loops, and the clockwise direction of the Kasumigaoka-machi--Kita-Aoymama loop (which is long, but is just a big loop with streets to cross). So far, I've reconfirmed only 26 km of loops, so a lot of work yet to do, but I'm still planning to try to do my first full run of a new 35 km loop plus the neighborhood course access route to it on Sunday.

I was considering resting Friday, based on sore feet in the morning and big plans for Sunday. However, I failed a second time to get the new JPH cake, so instead I started out for the Marunouchi/Ginza area to try other outlets. By that point my feet felt reasonably okay and I didn't try to run fast. Lots of cakes still at the Marunouchi JPH chocolate bar, but not that one (they had greater variety than I expected, though). After a brief detour to see whether Viron had any new since the first half of January (no), I wend down to Ginza Mitsukoshi, where they were also sold-out. After a similar brief walk to Origines Cacao, I decided that I was will to pay extra (in buying outside Isetan/Mitsukoshi), and ran to Tokyo Midtown. The original route would probably have been okay, but I deviated for lights around Shinbashi and the updated Google route had me going up a steep curved hill where the sidewalk disappeared due to construction and I was left running the street against incoming taxis (though that's a normal legal Tokyo thing, and I passed a walker near where the sidewalk resumed). At this point, it was past 8 pm and Midtown had all of two Longchamp Feuilleté (which I noticed Saturday Ginza Mitsukoshi had labeled as "nouvelle", which is technically true, though it's been in the line-up for over two months by this point and they are clearly working on selling off the current stock). Figuring I might as well finish off the set, I ran to Omotesandou Hills, where they still had an enormous about of cake, but not that one.

When I set out for Omotesandou Hills, I was planning to settle for cake from Lotus, which is a café along the Jinguumae Shopping Road. However, I also have a long list of theoretically quite good shops that I've only had two cakes from that I want to visit again, so I did that instead, Franzè & Evans London being open. I went with the Yuzu Meringue Tart (I've still yet to get anything not meringue from there), which probably closely resembles a lemon meringue pie. It definitely met my needs after the unplanned long run (I didn't have any energy foods prepared, or I would have opening something up around Tokyo Midtown). In a way, I didn't respect its crude appear to my sweet tooth, but on the other hand, I rarely see meringue cream (the topping is still soft), probably because pie and tart shops aren't my thing. In the end, I decided that excellent was a fair evaluation by my standards, so Franzè & Evans London will make the cut.

Anniversaire Café: Anniversaire Chocolat and Rocolte

Went to Anniversaire Café for the first time. On one hand, this is definitely Tokyo cake, but no take-out, so technically its Tokyo café items. I got Anniversaire Chocolat, their chocolate cake. It's more traditional than I go for, so I'm saying its excellent partially on technical grounds, but it was certainly very good. One interesting aspect is that it is a layer cake, but the middle layers don't go all the way through, so the ganache (I would call it, mostly ignorantly) on the outside is uninterrupted by sponge cake.

The other cake is Rocolte, which looks like a mont-blanc, but there's no actual "Blanc" (whipped cream). The chestnut paste/cream is fairly thick. Inside, beside most chestnut, is a light (in terms of the amount of fruit/color) cassis cream, I think. This is definitely excellent. I'd like to get back here, but there are four other places in the area that I haven't visited/posted on.

Jean-Paul Hévin, Longchamp Feuilleté

Sunday, I went out a couple more hours by bicycle and picked up photos a new missed places in otherwise finished maps and corrected an order for cake for Tuesday (I keep forgetting to check what I've had before). Then I went out and got Longchamp Feuilleté from Jean-Paul Hévin at Ginza Mitsukoshi. Also, I saw a new pastry a Dalloyau, Boule de Marron I think they were calling it, so I had to get that. On the way to my actual necessary errand for being in the Tokyo Station area, I swung by Toshi Yoroizuka and happily saw that they had a great cake from 2015 in the line-up (and claimed that it would stay in the line-up for the season, i.e., until December), so now I know what I want to do for a cake-off next weekend. I'll have four chances to find something else great, otherwise I'll be running to Ryoura on Saturday, take the train back, and run to maybe to Tokyo Midtown (which is closer than Kyoubashi, where I went today).

Today's cake was fill of good things that I like, dark chocolate mousse and both almond meringue and feuilleté, though the latter made it tend to break up into small chunks, which is a little awkward using a tiny cake fork. Maybe I should use a spoon. I still haven't found a sharp table knife for cutting cake (I assume sharp would be better than a serrated blade). It was excellent cake, though I've rating other of the similar cakes higher; it could be I'm spoiled now or just I liked the simpler versions (I think they were simpler).

The Boule de Marron seemed deflated in that there did not seem to be enough pastry for the amount of chestnut, at least for me, though I'm sure more people would complain if they were cheap with the chestnut. Still, it was good, but it reminds me that I want to get to Clair de Lune again, I hope Wednesday of this week, though for cake this time, not pastry, though a pastry from there on Sunday wouldn't go wrong.

Don't really need my camera in super-wide mode for cake, but I think I've already fixed that now.

Ryoura: Soyeux

As planned, I got a fifth Ryoura cake via Dean & Deluca at Tokyo Midtown. Of course, there was not much selection and I'm not sure home much it varies from week to week. Basically, they had three desserts from this shop, one cake that I've had before, one in a glass, and the one I got, Soyeux. On the one hand, it was pistachio. On the other hand, after pistachio mousseline (though fairly solid), it listed cherry gelatin, two things I don't want in my cake. But further on, actually there is some chocolate inside which smooths out the cherry and harmonizes with the pistachio. Also, the bottom is meringue, but a very powdery almond meringue that crumbles fairly easily; I haven't seen this kind of meringue before. Mostly reflecting my appreciation for good pistachio (though I've had plenty of bad pistachio cakes, especially with cherries), this was great.

I've been avoiding promoting shops recently, but two great cakes out of five puts this one at the top of the next higher category by one measure (but I apply a two-measure system, so not necessarily the actual top), so I'm designating it Quite Excellent. There was an opening even without demoting any suspended shops in that category, so no general shake up. That's a second great cake this week and the second shop (beside Yanagi) to get promoted. I've had good luck recently.