Bien-être: Onctueuse

Wednesday, I finally managed cake.

Monday, my goal was a pastry, so I went to The Ritz-Carlton Café and Deli (which is at Tokyo Midtown, in Akasaka) and got what I thought had a (small) chance to be a pastry, Pain au Crème (might have been the Latin script name), though this was definitely sweet bread. The cream was custard cream and it was definitely good sweet bread. There was a croissant there, so I can go back next week for a pastry, but that's about it among their selection, so it seemed worth trying this pastry-like bread.

For Tuesday, I made my first attempt on Bien-être. I had been successful last Tuesday, but this time there were only three cakes that I've already had, so I went to Viron in Shibuya, for Pain au Chocolat. This thing is huge, and fluffy, which I'm not so into. The chocolate is proportionate to the amount of actual pastry, rather than the size, which is probably just as well. It was definitely at least good and in the end (after a day to think about it), it seemed too perfectly formed not to rate it excellent, even if it wasn't actually to what I imagine would best suit me.

Wednesday, my second attempt at Bien-être was successful. There was another new choice, so I can try again next week, afterwhich September will hopefully bring more new cakes, though I've also seen a couple tarts this month that I've never had. I choose Onctueuse ("creamy"). This was a chocolate mousse cake with a pistachio center, which is pretty standard around here and also something I don't have high expectations for: too much chocolate, maybe. Pistachio cream was a reasonable choice (vanilla seems hopeless), though it can't do too much against chocolate. Fortunately, it was definitely good chocolate and definitely good cake. I wonder if it's more the chocolate coating that keeps me from liking these more, since JPH's layered mousse cakes are great without it, but they usually have a lot else going on in the other layers, so that might not be it. So this wasn't a breakthrough for this style of cake, but what was interesting was the raspberry: the forkful with the whole fresh strawberry was awesome. If this cake had enough raspberries for every bite or at least every other bite, it would probably be at least excellent. I've never seen a cake like that, but now I'm going to be looking for it everywhere. If I ever get bold enough, I may ask, "Can I get that with extra raspberries? I'll pay extra."