Lenôtre, Éclair Chocolat

Did the first run to Ginza of the week, but expect to be repeating it a few times. I only ran one way, as far as Hibiya, and then walked back with cake from Ginza Mitsukoshi, protecting my cake more than my feet. Pretty light exercise after two days without running, but the cake comes first and I'm hoping for longer runs Friday and Saturday. Today's target was Lenôtre, as the top shop in the quite fine category that was challenging all the shops in the higher exceptional category. I've gone through the traditional fresh cakes there and I'm starting on the éclair types. Today I got what seems to be a standard, the Éclair Chocolat. It's not easy to stand out as an éclair, but this convinced me that it was excellent, with a nice rich chocolate filling with some nibs (?) on top to add to the texture. This puts Lenôtre even in number of cakes with a shop in the exceptional group, so I have to bump the bottom of that group, Fraoula, back to the quite fine group (which doesn't have a great effect, as I've oversampled this shop even as an exceptional shop, so I wasn't getting a new cake from them any time soon). Now Lenôtre is tied for the top of the exceptional group with the fewest cakes and having new cakes available, and marginally challenging the bottom of the quite exceptional group in terms of rating, so it still remains a top priority, after cake-off winners. However, when I do get a chance, now Fiorentina Pastry Boutique is the top of the quite fine shops and is challenging at least some of the exceptional ones, but with fewer cakes, so it's next in priority. Probably won't get to it this week, though, as FC deserves another visit for its cake-off wins, and then I'll take another shot at the 2-cake quite fine list, which has two shops in Ginza that should now both be open.