14 Juillet Tokyo: Pensee

Since Sweet Sonobe posted on 14 Juillet Tokyo, I figured I might as well try it. Also, I want to go to lunch around there Saturday morning, so I wanted scope out options in the Shin Marunouchi Building and Marunouchi Building, though mostly I just looked at the latter, since I found my cake shop before many restaurants.

The run there was a fast 12 km/h, whereas the return trip was a reasonable (for carrying cake) 10 km/h, for a today of about 11 km. I didn't run yesterday, so I was in the mood. I'm busy this weekend, so I'll probably have a lot of budget for long runs at the beginning of the week, but not now. When I've got 21 km to use on a weekday, I'd like to get down to Paris S'éveille again, this time for cake. I can just barely get there, if I'm not too busy with work, which lately I often am.

The cake was Pensee (パンセ; 470 yen), which is almond cocoa biscuit sandwiching a little raspberry jam. Sorry, must not have hit the "flower" setting on my camera, so it looks a little fuzzy. It was definitely good cake, but it took me a while to convince myself that it was excellent. It certainly isn't as complex or rich as my usual favorite cakes, but it isn't light and it's well balanced between the chocolate and raspberry. I can certainly see times when this is exactly what I would want or trying to make it myself (if I were any good at making cakes, which I'm not), and that makes it excellent cake. Also, it's a first cake from them, so they get the benefit of the doubt. It was certainly much better than I was expecting, though I haven't heard anything bad about them (or really any cake shop, except from myself).