L'Essentielle, Cassisier

Thinking back to Wednesday, I went first Isetan from their visiting shop. I had one cake from L'Essentielle, so I figured I'd try another. I got the Cassisier. For running, I visited various parts of my neighborhood running course that I wanted to change and verified that they would work. I wanted to shorted some parts that I have to use to go most places and decided that I didn't want to cut through Keio Univ. Hospital, though people always have at that point. The original plan had been for a short run, but it ended up about an hour, once I connected up the parts.

The Cassisier, which is obviously cassis (black currant), is white chocolate based and has star anise as the spice accent (accents). This is just too soft a cake for me. I need a biscuit, cookie, or crunchy layer, I guess. There was enough going on with the top that I have some respect for it, so I'm calling it good, but I'm not in a hurry to sample from them again.

I planned no running for Friday, so Thursday I went for a long run to try to do a successful one-way neighborhood run to what I thought were the nearest new parts, as well as a little part that want to reacquaint myself with that was convenient to add.  These included absolutely confirming the Nishiebisu east and west loops, followed by the new Ebisu--Hiroo east and west loops. I'll have to change the last one, maybe, because I've since found a new religion church that I missed, but that's no big deal. I also did the Higashi north loop on the way home, just so I can skip it when I redo the central and south loops. I ran into one pedestrian bridge blocked off, so I cheated and used the intersection to cross, but I'm not going to scrap the run for that. If I had known, I would have crossed at a different bridge, though it's longer, but I wan't willing to double-back to get to it. It was a +2 h run, so I made use of a new snack source only the route, the Baking Shu in the Shibuya Stream complex and got Raisin Coupé, which is a bun. After an hour of running, I needed it. Actually, I sent my lunch hour trying to get a question answered by the cell phone company person, so I was pretty underfed that day (though more chocolate than usual). It might have been too much bread for another day, but it was 200 (approximately) well spent, and good.

Friday, I refrained from running, but there was shopping and exercising indoors, so I got a Chausson aux Pommes from Hediard. It's very precisely made, but ultimately boring, though still good.

Jean-Paul Hévin bar(re) in Marunouchi: Goutte d'Or and Aquitaine

Did a café-ish stop. This is the casual budget version of the chocolate bar in Isetan Salone Men's, which I scoped out last week. It's sort of hidden, Google might help you find it, but it currently doesn't identify Isetan correctly and assuming that you come to the correct block, the signs outside telling you and dozen shops and restaurants inside include neither, because they are only for the ones you can get too after you enter the main interior hall, not the ones that have only their own street entrances. As I read on someone's post and observed yesterday, never became full over the almost hour we hung out there (there aren't really that many customers to justify the Isetan shop, either; maybe it's temporary until the building across the street goes up, though huge skyscrapers take some time, I would imagine).

They have only a small selection of the chocolate drinks and they come in paper cups, but at about half the price (and they have coffee). Also, just a few cakes, but almost all not at the main Isetan. I got one advertised on their web site as an exclusive, the Goutte d'or, which is almond I though I read (the good thing is hollow chocolate with sugar inside), but the website points out star anise and sesame as accents, which I have reason to doubt. The other cake was Aquitaine, which has cheese (and maybe it has almond, since there's some nut on top), which might be a first for me from JPH. These were each 640. Both were excellent. Neither was especially exciting, but they were both interestingly different from other cakes I've had. Besides the different themes, the Goutte d'or was a fairly hard drier cake (not sure were the glare in the middle came from: must be reflecting off the camera)

and the cheese one was soft (sorry, it's upside down; actually, they put both on their sides, though that is reasonable, even if they don't display them that way in the case).

There were a couple other cakes there that I haven't had yet, but there are a couple seasonal ones at Isetan that ' haven't had either. Decisions, decisions.