Cake-off: Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé over Lenôtre Concerto

Monday, I didn't get out quite so early, maybe 8 am, but ran down to finish off the Roppongi 5&6 loop and then went on to explore areas southeast of there for future neighborhood run loops, though admittedly I switched to walking as it got hotter, and because it's not fun to start and stop running between sites and checking the map. I ended at Mitsukoshi Ginza to get Concerto from Lenôtre for a second-round cake-off for the losers' bracket. From there, I took the train, since it was a straight shot, and got Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé at Shibuya, which is the only location currently, though I can imagine that they might make it an exclusive somewhere else in the future after it finishes its current run next week. We'll see. With two cakes, I came back by train, which required a transfer, but on the same system.

This time, I'm going with the seasonal cake, Sadaharu Aoki's Éclair Caramel Salé. I appreciated the simplicity of salt caramel filling with a minimum of pastry. I still like the varied textures of Concerto, but next time I'm going to try chilling the silverware, as well as the plate, as I want this to be less melty.

I went out in the afternoon by bicycle to work on the big neighborhood run loop, Daita--Daizawa--Hatagaya--Kamiyama-chou--Kitazawa--Motoyoyogi-chou--Nishihara--Ooyama-chou--Shouto--Tomigaya--Uehara loop and was doing pretty good most of the beginning. At Shimo-Kitazawa Station area, I was not sure where to turn after passing under the tracks, so I tried the first street and ran into three pastry shops in a block that I hadn't known about, so they've been added with a minor adjustment to the map. However, I had overlooked a Jizou nearby that is going to require I chop off the southwest corner as a separate loop, so this loop will continue to get smaller.

Tuesday, no cake. I counted up recent activity and it worked out. I'll have two more cakes during the short work week. Just, I went by bicycle to Hikarie, parked, and ran south to work on Ebisu-Nishi loops, and a few other small ones along the way, all five successful. I'll do more before I get back to the big loop. I came back and did my full indoor workout, though the running turned out to take more than 1.5 h, so I'll need to get more done on other things tomorrow.