Cake-off: Lenôtre's Feuille d'Automne over Pierre Hermé's Cheesecake Infiniment Citron

Not counting making a run for breakfast supplies by bicycling, my exercise began a little before 9 am, when it was still just under 30 degC. I ran for about 1 hour, though I was doing 2:7 walking by the second cycle, and I was taking pictures of sites (or confirming lack or sites), so I was making adjustments for another severe heat day. I had intended to finish in an hour to arrive at Ginza, but I got involved in tracking down sites to fill in detail on my map, so actually I walked the second hour to finish. Found a Starbucks I had missed in Akasaka and thought I would have to repeat the Akasaka loop again, but actually it's on a block with only one guaranteed continuous access point, so it will be another isolated loop. Really, it should have already been there for the Cozy Corner (by Akasaka Stn., the one by Akasaka-Mitsuke Stn. is not a drugstore, though you can probably still get low-quality cake from t he family restaurant on the second floor, and actually maybe it's the same cake, if they're in the same group). I could make this part of the Akasaka loop, since it touches it on a point, but I see that elsewhere I made a rule about not having to remember which side of the street to run on (either because either is okay or because there is no choice). I've gone through meticulously now and checked all the Starbucks overlapping with the neighborhoods of my map, and I did find another that's going to make me have to redo a loop, the Jinguumae central loop. I've actually been in that one, so I should have remembered it, but it's on the 4th floor, so I wasn't noticing it, but there is a sign outside, so it counts. Guess redoing that is next. I'll work in a cake from a place on that route to make it worthwhile.

After two hours outside, I was ready for a break and got Lenôtre's Feuille d'Automne from Ginza Mitsukoshi and then took the train to Isetan's Pierre Hermé to get Cheesecake Infiniment Citron.

After lunch, I went out again by bicycling to make another attempt at finding missing great cakes from the list, starting southwest. The first and lost shops were closed for summer holidays (5 weeks and 1 week) and the others had nothing I was look for. It took 4 hours and I still have two shops to the northeast to check, but it shouldn't take so long. One is closed on Mondays (national holiday or not), so I'll need to do it tomorrow.

Well, I wasn't surprised that the cheesecake was excellent, but didn't need to be on the great list. It was from 2015, before there was an excellent category between good and great or any idea about doing cake-offs. Still, for someone who likes cheesecake, it's got more different layers than any other cake I know and is worth checking out. So Lenôtre's Feuille d'Automne, which loos beautiful, but is actually rather simple, just chocolate and straight (sugar and egg) meringue, I think. As a chocolate lover, that's good enough for me, since the chocolate is good.

So I'm not longer feeling an urgent need to do an extra cake-off. I still want to find another great cake, in case the citron baba really is great, but I think I won't let it change how I choose new cakes. With one shop gone, one shop moved, and one shop with shorter hours, looks like there are 9 shops left among the quite fine contenders that I need a third cake from, two of which require a holiday visit, so I'll hit them Sunday and the Monday holiday, I think.