Kenzo: Chocolat de Chocolat

The interesting part of the run happened before it. Ran long and fast Wednesday with no problems (well, no new problems), and then longer and faster on Thursday and had a disturbing pain in on the outside of my knee afterward and continually on Friday, though not where the previous problem was. I thought maybe I was going to have to rest until it disappeared, but Friday night, I reviewed a recent running program on knee pain. For my location, they just called it "Runner's knee" and showed one stretch, which I had added to the other one that I was doing regularly. That was the only advice they had, so I reviewed tried to follow the instructions exactly, which including doing each stretch for 20+ seconds, which I hadn't been doing. I stretched three times, and the pain was immediately gone like magic. I did get a slight echo of the pain later, so I've dong that stretch several more times then and today, but I was able to run almost 13 km today, keeping to 8 km/h, though that partially reflects the Saturday afternoon crowds in Shinjuku, even swinging out of my way northeast before heading west.

The goal of the trip was to visit Kenzo (洋菓子工房KENZO), which is over in Kamiochiai (within Shinjuku-ku). I didn't have high expectations for this, but someone at work recommended it and it's not that far, so I thought I should go at least once. They have the basic cakes of a Japanese cake shop, all very cheap. I got the Chocolat de Chocolat (チョコラ・ドゥ・チョコラ; 432 yen), reasoning that since they had three chocolate cakes, this was somewhat of a specialty. The cake started maybe good, then maybe just okay, and finally bad. The topping chocolate was not great, but okay as sort of candy chocolate. Having the whole thing in a plastic case so it could be crescent shape was inconvenient and should have clued me in, and the main body was such a weak chocolate that ultimately it was more like a cake that had been contaminated with chocolate than one that was intentionally chocolate. Finally, I just wanted to rinse the taste out my mouth, so probably won't be going back.

 

There are probably a lot of shops like this one (or visit any convenience store or grocery), which is why I'm not as excited about visiting random Tokyo Patisserie as I once was. Still, I've got plenty of ones recommend from sources that have given me plenty of multiple good tips in the past, so I'll keep trying. Next, though, I'm going to need to visit someplace I know has at least some excellent cakes.