Pierre Gagnaire: Chocolat Gianduja

My running is scaling down as I approach the weekend runs, which aren't planned as that long, although Sunday has room to grow if I decide to add to the basic plan of Jiyugaoka and Isetan as sources for great cakes for another cake-off. Specifically, I ran just under 10 km at about 10 km/h, which was actually a little faster than I had planned, so probably going to run right up to my running budget limit on Saturday (unless Fraoula finally comes through with the one cake of theirs that I've rated as great, in which case I'll maybe switch Limevert to Sunday).

The cake was Chocolat Gianduja, where the only other information on the card besides the Japanese pronunciation and price (600 yen) was "Chocolate Praline". This turned out to be mostly cream under the chocolate coating, half plain and half apparently hazelnut (or the name doesn't make sense). There was also a little spongy chocolate (or maybe Gianduja) cake in the middle and a flavorful sablé on the bottom that I'll guess was hazelnut, though I'm not that good at even basic identifications. It was definitely good cake, but did not have enough flavor to balance all that cream for me to get excited about it. Since it's very windy today and might rain, I chose to eat in (there are some tables in the sort of hallway next to the shop), where the lighting is not very flattering, at least for my phone camera.
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