Posts
All Comments
Due to the current state of construction projects, the southeast pedestrian bridge is less direct and narrower than ever, so I regretted not using some other strategy to cross. I skipped the southwest bridge and went around, although that bridge is fairly direct, so it might have been better just to use it. Even with all that, total time to get from my start to P. Bigarreaux was 1 hour to the second, according to my chronometer, and my speed was 11 km/h for 11 km and faster than the first part of yesterday's run. There, I got the Croissant aux Almondes au Chocolate (400 yen); it was great, with both almond paste and chocolate inside, chocolate drizzled outside, and baked to be hard on the outside (some almond croissant are soft and flat compared to a regular croissant and some avoid this but have an almost deep-fried outside, so this was the latter type). It was great pasty, but what a calorie bomb, with both sugar and fat. Half would have probably been enough, but for a 23 km run, it was perfect fuel (plus I ate my normal breakfast about 1.5 hours before starting).
The cake was Mille-feuille Chocolat (500 yen), which seemed like a good idea in my running-addled selection state, since I like both the flavor and the type, but really chocolate and custard are both much better than chocolate custard, or at least in this realization. I'll say it was good, since the mille-feuille was good and it wasn't so bad as chocolate custard goes.
Today, I went to an under-visited potentially (because I've still only sampled a few cakes) quite excellent shop, Limevert, which is along the Odakyu Odawara Line, Soshigayaohkura Station, in Soshigaya, Setagaya-ku. To avoid Shibuya, I went by way of the road west from Yoyogi Station. It's about 13 km each way, which I did averaging 10 km/h, though faster out than back. They have a relatively big (several tables) café space set up, so I ate in, as you can tell from the photo.
Today's cake was from Pierre Hermé, which I decided I needed a new cake from as a "reward" from winning my first cake-off (so I'll also need an extra visit to Dalloyau for the second one): Tarte Infiniment Chocolat au Lait (648 yen). This is just a tart, of course, one having a hard tart shell with caramel in the bottom (so you have to watch out for it being squeezed out when you cut into it), a main body of solid milk chocolate with some peanut pieces, little crunchy chocolate balls, and some dark chocolate sauce to stick the top lid of chocolate on and/or keep any loose balls from escaping. For a tart, it is a little complicated but still fairly straightforward. To me, it's a great example of chocolate tart, so I hope I get a chance to compare it to other great chocolate or caramel tarts.
The cake is Damier (ダミエ; 300 yen), for the pattern. It's sponge with some buttercream and chocolate. At that price, I wasn't surprised that there was no box, much less ice. They have cake wedges and layered rectangles for not much more. It's definitely good but also definitely nothing special, just simple cake, frosting, and chocolate coating.
Made another visit to Il Pleut sur la Seine on Sunday and ate in. We got the Bouchon, which may be an eat-in only option, but was not marked so this time, and Mille-Feuille, which is eat in only. The Mille-Feuille was great, I think. The clever bit was they pre-sliced the two and middle layers, so it was easy to eat while still retaining the "leaves". The Bouchon is the standard rum-soaked sponge cake (with some sort of glaze or something on the outside which didn't affect the taste or texture directly), which I don't really get, though it was good enough I suppose. So this shop is at least excellent. However, the service was not perfect, in terms of manners in terms of the café side, though that isn't really part of the calculations.
There was running, but not until Monday, which I took off. I've been having knee problems, so I'm working on new exercises (need to loosen up my thigh muscles, perhaps) and I didn't try to go fast, but did about 16 km at an average of 10 km/h. I was doing some non-cake shopping, but also visited Lettre d'Amour, investigating for future great cake cake-offs, but I might have simply looked online and seen that they finally closed last month (I always wondered how they stayed open with as little business as they seemed to do onsite), so that's two great cakes that I've lost, though they might reappear in some form at a future date. Instead of a pastry at Lettre d'Amour I got an overly dry cinnamon bum from the Dean and Deluce on Aoyama Avenue. I guess I should have microwaved or steamed it a little bit or something.
Ran down to Roppongi Avenue looking for a certain supermarket and ending up at the wrong one. At least I won't need to check there again. I've been having knee pain, so I was trying to take it easy, but still edged into 11 km/h for 8 km. Think I need to stretch the thigh muscles more, but haven't mastered the right stretch, I think.
In the afternoon, got to Jean-Paul Hévin, where I got the Menu French Touch, upgrading to the Chocolate Chaud Cancan, which was good but not clearly better and I'm not sure what the extra flavor was (something was supposed to melt into it gradually, a little whipped cream and maybe passion fruit), and Belle-Isle, which is apparently one of two eat-in only cakes related to the French Touch collection of valentines' chocolates. This is a layered cake with very airy mousse flavored with passion fruit and caramel, though not very strongly with the caramel. It was excellent, but a little light for me. Not sure whether I'll get back for the other similar cake in Yuzu and black tea, since you have to get the set and I don't really need more of the same hot chocolate (though they have hot chocolates that I'd like to try). The other eat-in item sampled was Coussin d'Amour Orange, which is vanilla whipped cream with perhaps orange and passion fruit rolled into a chocolate creme served with a little pitcher of chocolate syrup and a cup of orange confit. It was good, but I'm not into crepe, even chocolate creme. The chocolate syrup was the best part.
No cake today, but I did stand in line at Le Petit Mec and managed to get half a baguette (140 yen) before they sold out this time. It was excellent, nice and chewy.
In the face-off of these two cakes, I preferred the Croquant Fraise, which has custard, chocolate, strawberry (the common ingredient), caramelized almond slices, and a macaron shell. The Saya is also excellent, but I wouldn't have rated it as great if this were my first time. I am not surprised. I don't expect to like every cake the same amount every time and the line between excellent and great is not so clear. My impression of Saya was that it was too sweet for me. I had it with tea, so maybe next time I get an Sadaharu Aoki cake, I should either have milk or wine (I can imagine eating at least the fruity ones with sparkling wine).
Ran to Midtown to check whether Toshi Yoroizuka has Annya this early, but though the service person agreed that it was a great cake, they get the rhubarb from Hokkaido, so maybe it will come back in the summer. Next try will be one from Dalloyau, which I plan to visit tomorrow.
The run was about 9 km and I wasn't pushing too hard, just 11 km/h for the first part, 9 km/h through Akasaka, and 10 km/h coming back with cake. Felt pretty good.
Next 14 km was to Yu Sasage, and this time I stuck to the plan. I was only slightly slower then the first strech, but this brought me within the 10 km/h range. This time, neither of their great cakes that I've had were available, probably because it is the wrong season. I should have bought another snack there so I wouldn't be so hungry that I ate my cake at the actual target for cake. Got a photo, though.
First time to La Candeur, so got a little confused at the first turn (plus, I couldn't remember the details of the plan, so I took the main road south after rejoining Route 20). Seems like a nice shop, and very new looking. The selection was nice. I went with a traditional cake, Marjolaine, which was perhaps a mistake, but I'm too much a slave to the classics.
As I said above, I almost immediately gave into temptation and ate it at a park. This was the wrong temperature for this cake, which, based on the fact that two of the filling layers are whipped cream, should be eaten about 10 degC (which was the ambient temperature, but it would have taken a while to reach that, and I've already said that I was not patient). Anyway, I've made this cake myself, and this seemed to be exactly by the book and taste about how I would expect. So it was definitely good, although, as chocolate, chocolate whipped cream never works well for me, so again, this was perhaps a bad choice. It did make me think about making this cake again, but I don't really need this shop's (but not because it's worse), so that's not an indicate that it's excellent. Too many Tokyo shops to give them a second chance, unless they visit Isetan, in which case I should.
The cake this time was Tarte Caramel (486 yen), which turned out to be a custard tart on the bottom and I'm not sure what on the top, though caramel was involved. Perhaps there was caramel mousse inside a gelatin layer of caramel, but there was not a lot of flavor anywhere in this tart, so this was just okay and I probably won't need to get there be back soon expect for the "Vostock". Note sure why the photo came out blurry again. I think I need to reset the zoom, as it's not working well with the auto-focus.
I went to Marunouchi again for 14 Juillet Tokyo for Carmel Chocolle Prelle (カラメル・ショコラ・ポワール; 480 yen), which is definitely not the French spelling and Google doesn't recognize, so it probably was not thought about very much. Anyway, this is chocolate and caramel mouse with a caramel gelatin coating and pear in the center, as well as a some alcohol of some sort and visible nuts, which I didn't try to identify. There are so many things that could have gone wrong for me here, but actually this was a good well-balanced cake. It didn't "grab me", but the more I considered it, the more I respected it, so I went from rating it good to definitely excellent, which is very nice, since this shop is very accessible and has a large selection.
The cake I got was Le (?) Saint-Marc (ラサンマルク; 616 yen), which is a standard cake. I've had cake from here more than once years ago but never found anything that I was thrilled with, more in terms of variety than quality. This time, as a bonus (maybe because they messed up my receipt; I didn't really understand the explanation) they gave me a couple of Sablé "Mimorettou" (サブレ・ミモレットゥ), which is a name only they use, but there's a link here explaining how it uses 12-month aged cheese and almonds. Presumably the cheese is Mimolette, so I should keep an eye out for that. This is sort of a salty, cheesy, almond cookie, which means I know someone who would really appreciate this, so maybe we should go down there together for cake and get some more. Certainly it was excellent, so I'm also keeping an eye out for a recipe, as well as the cheese.
Did a training run of 13.0 km/h 300 m intervals, which took 4 laps with intervals. As usual, almost half was actually above 14.0 km/h, especially toward the end. Also, it was no surprise that runners are nice, as I dropped something and someone came running after me to return it. Not sure whether he saw me drop it or just looked for the stupid foreigner. No cake today, as I had cake and no running on Friday, so I show you my latest macaron efforts. Actually, they are a little dry by this point.
Went down to Shibuya to a little shop called The Bake and got their Sicilienne (獅子リアン; 500 yen), which is pistachio mousse above milk chocolate mousse with cherries and a base of chocolate biscuit. It's good, but the cherries don't really add much. This is about what I expected from my memory of earlier visits. If I went again, I might try the cheese cake, which was the next most promising thing. Of course, I appreciate that they are open until 8 pm, even on a Monday night.
There were a couple cakes that we didn't get yesterday at Isetan from Maison g Tokyo (patisserie for Meguro Gajoen) that there was still interest in today, so we got them rather than stand in line at Jean-Paul Hévin for expensive special-event cake (which I was interested as a eat-in experience, but now the chocolate bar has been converted to to make space for Valentine's chocolate season, as happens every year). The cakes are Pistache Fraise and Waguri Mont-Blanc, so a probably white chocolate and pistachio mousse (with sufficient gelatin) around some strawberry part with some nice whole pistachios and a strawberry, and a Japanese chestnut Mont-Blanc with a meringue base and a whole chestnut inside. Both were good, but not better than that. After five cakes and nothing great and a couple only good ones, I may never get down to the actual Hotel in Meguro, though definitely good.
Had some time in the middle of the day, so I wanted to do a training run of two laps around the imperial moat course at 11.0 km/h, but was still feeling tired from yesterday's run (when I was still tired from the day before's sprints). It ended up being one lap (5 km) at 12.0 km/h, just barely (by a few seconds seconds). I got 30 seconds ahead early on (from the 3.5 km), on the downhill part and need them on the back end.
For cake, I visited Isetan again and took advantage of Maison g Tokyo's special cakes (so many, that I'm suspecting the actual shop has a small selection). These were their Fromage Cru and Manjari (for 540 and 648 yen). The first is rare cheese cake, and had a thin fruit layer that looked like fig, though I couldn't tell. The other is named for chocolate of the famous brand Vorhona and was chocolate mousse, cream, and buiscuit (I think; the memory is fading) that was raspberry flavored, but much better balanced than my recent macaron ganache. Both of these were excellent, I think. Sorry for the shadow; I was in a hurry, as I was also heating water for coffee and tea (I didn't each two pieces alone).
Ran back to Marunouchi again today, this time to the cake shop for Chianti in the Marunouchi building. Chianti was just at Isetan (where I would have saved 8%). Got Juliet (648 yen), which is a pink raspberry heart-shaped cake. Yes, I should know better than get anything not round or square, since that means gelatin. In fact, I ran this cake 5+ km at 10 km/h and found that they had not actually restrained it in any way inside its box. Of course, I tried to be careful, but was surprised to find it perfectly intact. That's some well-set gelatin. Is I hinted, I was not impressed by it, though it was typical of its ilk, so I can call it good. Someone who likes this kind of cake should judge whether it's excellent. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt calling it good, though it was definitely not bad, just not worth bothering with to me. The run there was on the low end of 12 km/h.
I had already gotten my cake from the visiting Isetan counter, which is called maison g Tokyo, but is part of Meguro Gajoen, a wedding ceremon, complex, I think, so I'm not sure how welcome I would be if I show up down there sweaty, but we'll see. I got what they said was the specialty, and they use a picture of it on the Meguro Gajoen for the link to the cake shop, though aren't featuring it there. This is the Sicilian, which used pistachios and almonds, so definitely my kind of cake. Because of that, I'm not sure whether my finding it excellent says much about the quality of the shop, but is see when I follow up.
